Birds wearing clothes to help children learn to read in 1930

Here's the cover to a worn copy of New Progressive Road to Reading, a basal reader published in 1930 by Silver, Burdett and Company. Enjoy the well-attired turkey, chicken and duck.

The book, written by a quartet of New York City educators, contains stories with titles such as The Bad Old Fox, The Turkey Girl, The Silly Bantam, Dannie-no-bigger-than-your-thumb¹, The Fairy Beggar and The Gifts of the North Wind.

If you want to see some more poultry in outfits — and who doesn't — check out the textbook's wonderful endpapers.²

There are student exercises after each segment of the book. The last exercise, on the book's final page, is called "IS IT SO?" These are some of the questions.

Finally, this book doesn't have anything in it indicating who owned it or what school district it was used in, but there's a wonderful surprise on the page preceding the title page — a color sticker for Delta Air Lines.

According to Delta's website, the "None Faster. None Finer. To and Through the South" slogan was first used in 1948.³

Want more School Days nostaglia? Check out this directory featuring dozens of archived posts.
Footnotes
1. This post represents the first appearance of "Dannie-no-bigger-than-your-thumb" on the Internet, according to a Google search. You're welcome.
2. We've had a nice run of awesome endpapers here in recent days, including those in Elson-Gray Basic Readers Book Six and Corporal Cameron.
3. My favorite Delta slogan is this one from 1959: "The Airline with the Big Jets."