Studies in Crap: Learning ‘Bout Ducks and Dicks With My Weekly Reader

Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.

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A school year’s worth of My Weekly Readers

Date: 1936 – 1937

Publisher: American Education Press

Discovered at: Prairie Village estate sale

The Cover Promises: In the Depression, Americans couldn’t even afford news.

Representative Quotes:

• “The dog in the picture has a letter to mail. The dog puts the letter into the mailbox.” (Cover story, December 14-18, 1936.)

• “Children play with the chickens. Little chickens are not toys.” (Above-the-fold headline, March 22-26, 1937.)

Between the fall of 1936 and the following spring, the world boiled in changes. Civil war broke out in Spain. Prince Albert ascended to the British throne. In Flint, Michigan, workers seized control of a GM plant, ushering in the era of the UAW; meanwhile, on an island somewhere in the south Pacific, archaeologist Indiana Jones settled for all time the question of God’s existence: “Yes He does, and just close your eyes when He gets in one of His face-melting moods.”

Of course, none of this made My Weekly Reader: Edition Number One, the newspaper for the most wee of kids. Even in the thick of the FDR/Landon election, young America was fed “news” like “A big duck lives with the pig” and “Children like to look at squirrels.”

While this may seem innocent, good Americans even then had to monitor the schools for leftist indoctrination.

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Liberal sex-freaks!