Robinson Crusoe Silhouettes: Twenty Designs, All Different, The Complete Story of Robinson Crusoe in Silhouettes; with: Robinson Crusoe Silent Reading Cards

Chicago: A. Flanagan Company, 1926. Two complete sets of educational materials for children, using the plot of Robinson Crusoe to teach elementary reading skills. The set of Robinson Crusoe Silhouettes features captioned flash cards with twenty silhouettes based on Frank Irving Weatherbee’s illustrations for The Robinson Crusoe Reader, a popular classroom adaptation of Defoe’s novel. The images include Crusoe’s ship before the wreck, his construction and agricultural projects on the island, the taming of Crusoe’s parrot, his meeting with Friday, and his eventual rescue by an English ship. The set of Robinson Crusoe Silent Reading Cards reprints those twenty silhouettes in smaller format, along with five line drawings, and adds twenty-five corresponding text cards to be cut in preparation for playing various matching and sentence-building games: “The teacher should not object to the enthusiasm shown by the alert youngsters. Let them learn the happy way.” Both sets fine and uncut, in battered publisher’s envelopes. Title card and twenty silhouette cards, measuring 11.25 x 7.75 inches; title card and card of instructions, five pictorial cards, and twenty-five text cards, measuring 9 x 6 inches. Cards printed recto only in black on buff cardstock, with fragmentary publisher’s pictorial envelopes. (Inventory #: 1003973)