Rainbows, Signposts, Secrets, Rewards, Panorama, Fiesta

July 6, 2015 8:39 AM

The Houghton Mifflin Readers (1971): Textbook Illustrations that Blew a Million Minds. Vintage textbook graphics, from covers to poetry to illustrations.
posted by maryr (34 comments total)

Rainbows: trippy
Signposts: trippy
Secrets: cute
Rewards: cute
Panorama: cute
Fiesta: cute
Kaleidoscope: trippy
Images: trippy
Galaxies: FEARFEARFEARFEARTERRORFEAR
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:48 AM on July 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

Thank you. I love this when I was a kid, love it even more now.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:56 AM on July 6, 2015

Reminds me a little of these board games from the ’70s (although, more upbeat) that we recently found in storage at my school.
posted by blueberry at 9:01 AM on July 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm psyched you posted this, because I wanted to, but felt my social acquaintance with John Hilgart was one inch too close for me to legitimately do so.

Really, if you are of a certain age, this stuff is mainline design nostalgia to the way the world of our childhood looked. And if you're not, this might be the very best way for you to get a sense of it.

It was great.
posted by escabeche at 9:04 AM on July 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

Previously: The Biology Textbook That Wished It Was A Progressive Rock Album. The main link is dead, but all the psychedelic goodness can still be found here.
posted by Kabanos at 9:24 AM on July 6, 2015 [11 favorites]

It's bizarre to me how psychedelia entered the mainstream visual vernacular during this era—not just for things which were plausibly associated with the counterculture, but for *everything*, from advertisements to cookbooks to detergent bottles to children's books. And it's not like there were any illusions about what had *inspired* the aesthetic—folks straight-up called it "psychedelic".

Great stuff, though. This look was fading away by the time I came along, so for me it's more a mirage of a world that barely missed me, than nostalgia for anything I experienced directly.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:34 AM on July 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

There's not a week that goes by that I don't think about Serendipity, which was the first book we read when I was transferred into an advanced reading class in 6th grade, and which I read in entirety, despite the fact that we only read a couple of stories in the class. I wish this link included a list of the stories published in these books, as I have wondered about the stories from Serendipity, and who wrote them, for a long time.

The books also introduced me to the word serendipity, which has been very useful.
posted by maxsparber at 9:34 AM on July 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Don't miss Kabanos' link. Whoa.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:37 AM on July 6, 2015

Ah, man - those Readers just make me melt with pleasure -- total childhood flashback stuff. Thanks, maryr!
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:50 AM on July 6, 2015

Wow, it's like a trip within a flashback!

Especially BONANZA - we had a yard sale copy of that one that hung around our house for years.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:00 AM on July 6, 2015

Had some of these. Frightening to see the covers again now. I too wish the TOCs were included.
posted by newdaddy at 10:02 AM on July 6, 2015

My goodness. Never encountered these - I don't think psychedelia got into the mainstream nearly so thoroughly in the UK, and where it did it was very much watered down.

But... I wish to live in that world. I will move there as soon as possible, so if someone can give me the website where I can book tickets, I'll be on my way.
posted by Devonian at 10:11 AM on July 6, 2015

These look amazing. I remember a textbook I stole from a closed school when I was about 8 that had artwork of a man in an oxygen mask climbing a mountain. I don't remember anything about the book, but I sure did like that picture.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:15 AM on July 6, 2015

I like how half the graphics look like someone just got a new set of markers and COULD NOT WAIT to use all of them.

I should probably note that I found this on Twitter via Jessamyn care of Deb Chachra.
posted by maryr at 10:19 AM on July 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

i totally remember these. i am having a very hard time remembering the content itself... can anyone help an old man out? were they just storybooks? or was the fiesta book actually a primer on executing and/or attending a fiesta? :) it's funny just how thoroughly those images are rooted in my mind.
posted by rude.boy at 10:20 AM on July 6, 2015

Wonderful and lovely -- thanks for posting.

Also, it looks to me as though a debt is owed to Peter Max.
posted by Work to Live at 10:30 AM on July 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

I dunno about "blew minds" -- that was the high end standard of commercial illustration style of the time. No doubt a fair amount of drugs were being consumed by illustrators and art directors both, but for kids growing up with it, this style was ubiquitous and seemed perfectly normal. Fascinating and lovely, but not unusual.

It's left me with a lingering fondness for the genre, actually, and Leo and Diane Dillon have always been among my favorite artists in any form.
posted by ardgedee at 11:50 AM on July 6, 2015

I remember Ed Emberly from his book on drawing.

I found copies of 'Diversity' on Amazon. (The author said he couldn't find any.). Check your Facebook messages!
posted by persona au gratin at 12:45 PM on July 6, 2015

Looking at these, it feels like a long neglected corner of my brain has just been lit up again after some 40 years of darkness. Wow. These and the Letter People were ubiquitous presences in the classrooms of my youth.
posted by Chrischris at 12:45 PM on July 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Aw, the inflatable Letter People! I was thrilled the day it was MY TURN to go get that day's letter out of the cabinet. Can't remember which one it was, though.
posted by emjaybee at 12:58 PM on July 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

This was from when I grew up! which explains a lot of things.
posted by jessamyn at 1:03 PM on July 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was just barely too old for these. I feel deprived.

If the guy who does the "70s Sci-Fi Art" Tumblr hasn't discovered these yet, they will make his blogging so much easier well into the future.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:23 PM on July 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Personally approved by Peter Max, it'd seem. (Link to Bing images caution...) (Peter's now 77.)

Considering that pre-Max-era textbooks were drab black-and-white spaces seldom broken by -any- illustrations ... let alone (expensive) color. HM was making a bold and welcome departure.

The last time I saw a high-school textbook it looked more like a comic book than I could ever have imagined. (Previously) But that's a deep subject!
posted by Twang at 3:20 PM on July 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I grew up with what is probably the next generation of Houghton Mifflin readers, published in 1976 or 1979. The 1971 covers look familiar to me, but digging up the covers of the next generation took me straight back to being an eager/miserable seven-year-old at Thunder Mountain Elementary School ca. 1980. Here's the ones I could find:

Cloverleaf
Honeycomb
Sunburst
Passports
Keystone
Tapestry
Windchimes

I am sure there are others. I remember losing my copy of Windchimes and being so, so, so certain I would get kicked out of third grade.
posted by heurtebise at 3:25 PM on July 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I moved schools a lot, so I didn't work straight through the series, but I definitely had Fiesta, Kaleidoscope, and Serendipity.
posted by candyland at 3:49 PM on July 6, 2015

We used the Ginn Readers in grade school. These are the ones I remember:

The Dog Next Door and Other Stories
How It Is Nowadays
One To Grow On
A Lizard to Start With
Tell Me How The Sun Rose

I think we had Measure Me, Sky too.
posted by SisterHavana at 5:04 PM on July 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

OH MY GOD A LIZARD TO START WITH
posted by escabeche at 5:42 PM on July 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

We used the Ginn Readers in grade school.

MYSTERY SNEAKER!

Coincidentally, I just saw that on the shelf at my local Savers.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:18 PM on July 6, 2015

I am exactly the right age, but I don't remember seeing any of these. And I was a kid who read every textbook through, the first day it was given to me. And I read the other kid's books, from the kids in the other reading groups. (There were NEVER enough books!)

Maybe they were too expensive for my school district? I remember getting the Dick and Janes when they were discarded, and I remember newer, more brightly colored books. But none of these match what I remember. We had reading books with their original covers, not like the math or social studies books in their generic green "rebound" covers. But these aren't them.

The books I remember just had stripes on the covers. Like, white on the top half, and broad colored stripes on the bottom half. One reading group would have red and orange striped books, and another would have purple and pink stripes, and another blue and green.
posted by elizilla at 6:41 PM on July 6, 2015

These are kind of weird. But in a way that I am both equally disturbed and interested in the covers. I guess that the names are a really broad theme of the textbook? They seem out there, although that wouldn't be uncharacteristic of the 70s. My textbooks from elementary school (from 10 years ago) were waaay more subdued. And boring-er. But I still read ahead of everyone, haha.
posted by starlybri at 3:32 AM on July 7, 2015

Heurtebise, we had that same series in my elementary school, ~1983-1988. Thanks for finding them.
posted by mbd1mbd1 at 6:49 AM on July 7, 2015

Elementary school 1982-1988. We got brand-new Opening Doors textbooks with a two-tone cover (beige up top and light brown on the bottom) with a streamlined illustration of…I remember rainbows being involved…? A Google search turns up nothing, sadly, but I remember how thick and heavy that book (and the coordinated workbook) were in my knapsack.

We also had SRA cards, which I tested out of in third grade. Because I read the best in the class.
posted by pxe2000 at 9:19 AM on July 7, 2015

I remember seeing this one around our house:

People Need People (Holt Basic Reading System,1973)

It was published before I was born, so I'd have to say it was older cousins bringing it with them on visits or something. I still think the cover is vaguely creepy. (They were apparently rereleased in 1977 with less busy covers, so I wonder if I wasn't the only one who thought they were creepy.)

Then only other textbooks I remember, which were also my favorites, were from the Scott Foresman Basics in Reading series, published in 1978.

No Cages, Please
Step Right Up!
Daisy Days
Flying Hoofs
Dragon Wings
Calico Caper
Hootenanny

There are a couple that don't have images available online, but I really liked the covers as a kid and they stuck with me all this time. I wasn't in school yet when these came out, but my school held on to them for a good, long while into the 80s.
posted by i feel possessed at 9:21 AM on July 7, 2015

This animated gif also reminded me of some of these art styles.
posted by blueberry at 7:02 AM on July 8, 2015