Barney & Clyde by Gene Weingarten; Dan Weingarten & David Clark for February 13, 2021

Us kids used to get it free in elementary schools in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.

Whoa! That just took me back a few score years!

It even taught me things. British currency decimalization. NASA.

Did you notice he said, “us kids” and “your parents”. He is going way back now and not just in his choice of reading.

During the school year, the Weekly Reader was distributed free in class at my school, as was each spring’s first issue of the Summer Weekly Reader for that grade level, but parents had to subscribe in order for us to receive the rest of the summer issues at home. The free first summer issue always had the first installment of a gripping cliffhanger serial, but my parents always signed me up for a different grade level, so I never got to find out what happened!

My Weekly Reader even had its own comic strip, Uncle Funny Bunny, recently singled out by comics historian Jerry Beck as the worst comic strip of all time!

Aww…poor pop.

Ooh, My Weekly Reader. I’m surprised it lasted into this century! Good shtuff at the time, though!

Next he’ll be asking her what books she ordered from the Arrow Book Club or Scholastic Book Club. It was always fun going through their monthly catalog, and it made for a nice change of pace to the school day when the books arrived and the teacher gave them out. I still have a few of their books from my younger days.

Scholastic Book Club is still in business, I buy stuff for grandchild every month.