Used Textbooks Middle School – Two textbooks made their historical mark in American education.  Published between 1688 and 1690, the first historic textbook was “The New England Primer” which was compiled specifically for the children of the American colonialists by Benjamin Harris, an English printer who arrived in Boston, Massachusetts in 1686.  Continually remaining in print into the nineteenth century, “The New England Primer” was intended to teach rudimentary reading to students of all ages.  Its ninety pages included general instruction of the alphabet as well as learning words and their structure of vowels and consonants, the usage of double letters, syllables.  All this teaching was primarily based on religious maxims, Christian catechisms, puritan ideals and such famous verses as the one which appeared in its 1784 edition and had been reiterated by countless children for all those decades:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.

The second historic textbook is the “McGuffey Readers” which was written by William Holmes McGuffey and published in 1836 by Truman and Smith, a small publishing house in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Initially, the “McGuffey Readers” were a series of four graded readers targeting primary level students which, in 1840, were subsequently followed by two more readers that were added to the entire series and these were intended for middle school and high school level students.

The lower level series of readers 1 through 4 were made up of a compilation of short stories, poems, essays and speeches:

* Reader #1 taught reading by phonics (the identification of letters and their arrangement into words and their placement within words);
* Reader #2 helped students understand phrases and sentences once they were able to read;
* Reader #3 was equivalent to today’s 5th or 6th grade and it taught vocabulary and the definitions of words;
* Reader #4 taught grammar to higher level primary school students.

The more advanced two readers of the series (Reader #5 and #6) contained passages and quotes from the classical works of acclaimed writers in the English language such as Lord Byron, John Milton and Daniel Webster.

As popular and long lasting as “The New England Primer” had been, the “McGuffey Readers” far surpassed it with nearly 150 million copies having been sold to-date and it is still currently being used in several school around the country.  There are those in the textbook industry who even equate the sales of the “McGuffey Readers” to the sales of the Bible and Webster’s Dictionary

Parents, whether they are the good old “McGuffey Readers” or other more contemporary textbooks which are required in your children’s middle school curricula, save your hard earned money and buy them used from most book stores about town or, for a greater selection and more savings, click your way into the Internet and browse through websites of online used textbook sellers such websites as the following:

* Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/New-Used-Textbooks-Books/b/ref=sa_menu_tb0?ie=UTF8&node=465600&pf_rd_p=328655101&pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=507846&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=04CRRF0CEGQSY8EF1VJH)
* Half.com (http://www.half.ebay.com/textbooks)
* DealOz.com (http://www.dealoz.com/index.pl?cat=book&lang=en-us&search_country=us&section=)
* Barnes and Noble (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/textbooks/index.asp?r=1&popup=0)
* Alibris http://www.alibris.com/books/middle-school-textbooks).

Filed under: Used Textbooks For Sale

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