Dick and Jane refers to the two main characters, "Dick" and "Jane", created by Zerna Sharp for a series of basal readers that William S. Gray wrote to teach children to read. The characters first appeared in the Elson-Gray Readers in and continued in a subsequent series of books through the final version that Scott Foresman published in These readers were used in classroom in the United States and in other English-speaking countries for nearly four decades, reaching the height of their popularity in the s, when 80 percent of first-grade students in the United States were learning to read through these stories. Although the Dick and Jane series of primers continued to be sold until and remained in use in some classrooms throughout the s, they were replaced with other reading texts by the s and gradually disappeared from school curriculum. The Dick and Jane series were known for their simple narrative text and watercolor illustrations.
The story focuses on a married, middle-class couple who resort to robbery when the husband's employer goes bankrupt. In the year , Dick Harper Jim Carrey , a executive for a major media corporation called Globodyne, gets promoted to Vice President of Communications. Finding increasingly difficult to apply to a comparable job as vice president, Dick accepts low paying work, but he and Jane are unable to keep their jobs, so they start to sell their utilities first. Tired of being screwed around, Dick turns to a life of crime and convinces Jane to follow him.
Dick and Jane books were the predominant readers in public schools from the s through the early s. The books were created by educator Williams S. To understand the phenomenon of Dick and Jane, it is helpful to have a little background on the books that preceded the series. In the early 19th century, schoolhouses were not well-supplied with books of any kind, so students were asked to bring a book from home.
Sign in. The first four bite-size episodes of IMDb's first original scripted series, " You're Not a Monster ," are available now. Watch now. Title: Fun with Dick and Jane