I'm probably telling you more than you'd care to know about this subject, but Dick, Jane, Sally, and their dog Spot were featured characters in the very old Scott-Foresman basal reader series. The books probably extended from pre-primer to second grade level or so. Some of you may have read from the Ginn basic readers, which featured Tom, Betty, Susan, and their dog, whose name may have been Flip, but I'm not absolutely sure. That series, too, probably extended from roughly pre-primer to second grade level.
quote:Originally posted by SomewhereupinMichigan:
Yeah, and odd how we get off on some of these tangents. Border started this thread by posing the question as to whether Tom & Dick & Sally had a connection to a 3rd Rock episode. I would suggest that there is a greater coincidence that Gord learned from some of the same elementary readers as a youngster growing up in Canada. The Dick & Jane series got its start in the 1940s (maybe even the 30s) and it is entirely possible that his first school books included this series. It pretty much died out as the educational tool of choice by the late 60s/1970 when a new generation of training tools took hold. I'm thinking Gord gravitated to these names as recollections of his youth as he was writing a song to be sung as a bedtime story for his children, which was the true origin of The Pony Man. What do you think?
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