Dear Illustrated Classics, You’re Awesome
I recently came across this Illustrated Classic Edition of The Oregon Trail and it brought me back. Did you read these? Published by Moby books, they were abridged versions of all the well-known works of literature for young readers. For a period of time (roughly around my 8th birthday) I was obsessed. My teacher had a ton of them on the shelf, so I went one after another. At that age, I had no idea that there was such a thing as abridgment. In my mind, I was reading the only Moby Dick or Oliver Twist that existed.
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The key were the illustrations. Simple black and white drawings, one on every other page, along with a caption. This combination of text and images was essential.
Long story short – it felt like a book for me.
Lost in the Cloud covered the Illustrated Classic much better than I. Complete with some excellent photos. Click here to take a nostalgia bath.
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About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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Oh yes, I read some of these, too. I think my fourth grade teacher had them. I vividly remember reading Mark Twain.
these are showing up all the time at my local library’s 25¢ sale cart and i buy them when i see them. they aren’t as much a nostalgia point for me (i would have been in high school when these came out) as they are a fascinating study in abridgement… and an underscore of how bloated a lot of contemporary fiction for kids has become.
i’m also struck with the idea that somehow including an illustration in a book lowers the reading age or expectation. wouldn’t adults appreciate the occasional break from text? does a massive body of text without break constitute the literary equivalent of “good-for-you spinach” versus the the “eye candy” of pictures?
It’s odd how that illustration thing works, but it does seem to be the commonly-held belief that artwork inside the book=for kids. I’m with you that that whole way of thinking is pretty silly. It seems to be shifting slightly with the acceptance of graphic novels for adults, but I think the illustration free “spinach” it what most adults think they should be reading. If that changed, I bet adult reading would jump.
I loved these as a kid. I had a ton of them. I too, didn’t realize what “abridged” meant. When I re-read some classics in high school, I was shocked to find out how long they were. Whenever I think of the book Great Expectations, I can vividly see some of those black and white images. There’s one of Miss Havisham in her wedding dress, one of her wedding cake with spiders crawling around. I have even bought a few of these at used book stores for my kids. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
I loved these, and had forgotten them until recently, when a stack of them came into the school library where I volunteer. Sat down to read them and fell back in love. I especially remember Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
My grandmother gave me these as Christmas and birthday presents when I was a kid. I still have fond memories of reading Ben Hur, Call of the Wild and Great Expectations. What a great series.
I had the 1983 set of these as a kid – a gift for the holidays or my birthday, I think. I blame them for my inability to get through Dickens in the original for *years*. I knew from the abridged version of Tale of Two Cities that the man could tell a great story, but the original version was just… so… wordy.
And yet, I do have such fond memories of them.
Ahh you have made me so happy with the little nostalgia bath ^_^ I got into classic literature because of these books..I already possesed a love for reading and illustration..these books were filled with gold for my young mind..The artwork with the stories and the smell of printing ink always held and holds to this day an enchantment for me.
I’m 29 so I didn’t have the joy of buying them from supermarkets or getting them in Happy Meals but a wonderful teacher in my Jr. High had Tales of Mystery and Terror and Treasure Island..these with Frankenstein are among my favorites. Thank you so much for posting.