Bank Street Classics

Little Golden Books

The first series of affordable cardboard books, and the first to be mass-marketed to children, were collectively known as Golden Books and made their first appearance roughly 50 years ago. The books made an immediate and lasting impression on post-war children because of one amazing fact: The children could actually afford to buy one of these books for a week's allowance. Golden Books also pioneered one-to-one marketing: on the inside cover of each book was the Golden Books signature design with the words "This book belongs to __________", so that a child could write in his or her own name.

Bank Street founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell authored or coauthored some of the original Golden Books. Since then, millions of children eagerly bought these books—many of them ongoing classics such as The Taxi that Hurried—and have passed them on to subsequent generations who are eagerly learning to love to read.

Bank Street Readers

The Bank Street Readers, hardcover books with lavish, full-color illustrations, were first published in 1965 and 1966 by Macmillan. They were comprised of two Preprimer Readers and six Readers for Grades One through Three (two for each grade), and were accompanied by extensive Teacher’s Guides and Pupil Workbooks. (Revised editions of the six Readers were published in 1972.)

The most outstanding feature of the Bank Street Readers, however, was that they were the very first multi-ethnic urban basal readers.

As such, the Bank Street Readers totally changed the nature of early childhood literacy teaching in America, sweeping away the all-white suburb of Dick and Jane and their dog Spot and their many imitators. Soon other publishers jumped on the bandwagon, rushing to emulate the Bank Street Readers with their own multi-ethnic versions.

The two Preprimer Readers, published in 1965, are the 32-page In the City and the 64-page  People Read.  In the City, with its wonderfully conceived color illustrations on every page, takes us on a tour of the teeming, busy city and its people from dawn to dusk. People Read continues and expands the tour with dazzling illustrations of the many different kinds of people and professions and parts of the city. Each book has a Vocabulary List in back.

The Grade One Readers are Around the City  (128 pages) and Uptown, Downtown (192 pages), published in 1965, and graced with lively, full-color illustrations on every page. They give us stories of children in the park, the playground, in neighborhood streets, jumping rope, on the ferry, building a snowman, observing a construction site, making new friends, and helping an old lady. Other topics include the policeman’s horse, baby brothers, food shopping, dogs and cats, school, kites, and, in the second volume, Uptown, Downtown, some folk tales. Each book has a Vocabulary List.

The last four Bank Street Readers, published in 1966, are for Grades Two and Three, and have a hefty 256 pages each, together with progressively extensive Vocabulary Lists. In these Readers, there are occasional pages without an illustration

The Grade Two Readers are My City and Green Light, Go. They contain more complex stories of children in the city, together with adaptations of Folk and Fairy tales, as well as one- and two-page poems.

The Grade Three Readers are City Sidewalks and Round the Corner. Naturally, they are a step up in complexity from the Grade Two books, with longer stories about city children, Folk and Fairy tales, stories about real life discoveries and adventures and American history, and poems.