OK, this is seriously bothering me. My mom, who used to be a school speech therapist, once brought home a series of old reading textbooks. Each book came with an accompanying teacher’s guide as well. The books were collections of short stories, along with activities-typical textbooks one would use in an elementary school reading or language arts class. The first volumes were pretty short in length, probably intended for younger children, while the thicker ones were obviously intended for kids in upper grade levels. I believe I came into possession of these books in the early ‘90s when I was still a kid, and they were already a bit old by then, maybe late ‘70s or early ‘80s. However, I loved these books-even though I didn’t need them for any school purposes, I loved reading the stories inside.
I would absolutely love to find these books again-I’m sure at some point, probably when I reached high school, my mom eventually discarded them or took them to a used book store. As a result, it’s been at least twenty years since I’ve laid eyes on them. I have to assume, however, that I may be able to find them on Amazon or some place like that.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember much about the books, nor the publisher. The covers were pretty cool-I think some of the books aimed towards older kids had some interesting pictures of things like space, or people on other planets, or people in caves…things like that. One of the higher-level books had some stories in it about, for example, a boy and his father who get stranded in a school bus during a massive blizzard, and another was about a tornado that struck a home where a babysitter was watching some kids. There was also a nonfiction article about Apollo 13, which was interesting to read back in the day years before the movie came out.
Outside of the covers, the spine and back were white, if I remember correctly. I can’t recall the title of each book, but I think they were a phrase of some sort.
Any ideas?