Presentation Paper

These images depict the all-American family residing in a house in the suburbs. Dick, Jane and Sally are shown having adventures in and around their backyard and their neighborhood. The images show how American families idealized the American dream.

The images were used in basal readers for forty years picturing the ideal family and eighty million children learned to read with the readers. They are considered an American cultural icon.

I was planning to use about twenty images showing how the children changed over the years from the simple readers of the early part of the century to the midcentury and the postwar, which was the readers’ heyday. The images move into the 1970s. Later, there were also satires written about the basal readers.

Users of the website would consist of baby boomers and other people who remember the children, perhaps fondly, and want to look back on their childhood memories. People with an interest in basal readers, educators, and people with an interest in postwar America would also use the website.

Metadata I would use consists of the following: An I.D. number for each image.(1,2,) Name of the image Description of the image The name of the publisher The name of any contributors The date of the image Book where the image originates

I will also add other relevant information as author, illustrators and description of the pictures