1860 Rollo Series, Learning to Read, Jacob Abbott

Rollo Learning to Read, The Rollo Series, A New Edition, Revised by The Author, New York and Sheldon and Company.

Rollo Learning to Read, the second in the series, gave parents a model for teaching their children to read and served as a reader for the children. The book may not strike us as a good primer, but the goofy repetition in such stories as Tick, Tick,Tick and Jack Hildigo must have delighted young readers of the time; they still have their charms today.

The difficulty with most books intended for children just learning to read, is, that the writers make so much effort to confine themselves to words of one syllable, that the style is quaint and uninteresting, and often far more unintelligible than the usual language would be.

The authors design here has been, first to interest the little reader, hoping, by this interest, to allure him on to the encounter of the difficulties in the language, and to the conquest of them.

Hence the more difficult words and phrases, in common use, are not avoided, for the very object of such a reading book should be to teach the use of them.

They are freely introduced, and rendered intelligible by being placed in striking connections, and familiar, by being frequently repeated. by a wonderful provision in the structure of the mind, children thirst for repetition the very thing essential to give security and permanence to the knowledge they acquire.

The subjects of the articles, accordingly, and the method of treating them, are in the highest degree juvenile.

But the language is mature. For it is language which we wish to teach them, and consequently we must keep, in language, a little above them, advancing continually ourselves, as they advance.