“Reading Dick and Jane with Me (1989) is an artist’s book created to interrupt the authority of old elementary school textbooks called The Dick and Jane Readers. These reading textbooks of the 1940’s and 50’s represented a white upper middle class suburban family as normal life for most Americans. Although statistically the average American at this time was working class, the artist as a young girl thought these depictions meant that her family must be an aberration outside the norm. In Reading Dick and Jane with Me, children from Clarissa’s old neighborhood stand in for the young people who could never talk back at that time.” –Vamp & Tramp.
Cover title. Offset printed artist’s book produced at Visual Studies Workshop.
“Sligh underscores the covert, powerful, and potentially dangerous messages sent to young readers when the power of literature, even of the most elemental sort, is backed by the authority (both on a real and spiritual level) of the school. What happens when the young don’t see themselves or their worlds reflected in the models foisted upon them? The simplicity of this book’s format doesn’t conceal the complexity of the issue or the peril of the possible consequences.”–Vamp & Tramp.
For use in osborne collection only. not available for interloan.