I received mine on Wednesdays during the summer months, especially around the years 1963 and 1964. What a thrill for me at that time!
Oh the weekly reader, I didn't know it was around in the sixties as well. I remember getting these in school in the early seventies. I use to think these were great and I don't know why schools got away from giving these out. For me it was a clever way to give kids motivation to want to read because the stuff in the weekly reader could be entertaining. So, it did serve a purpose but I guess over the years the cost was too much or something.
Oh god yes, that was a staple of education we had a reading class where we had to buy a subscription to the weekly reader. My heavens we had some thought provoking discussions for little kids. It seemed with time though that some of the stories were pretty far from vanilla. It was just after the Vietnam war mind you and there had to be a ton of propaganda stuff going on I suppose. You know that is a good question why don't kids get these still in school? I guess they just read the actual paper now perhaps? I will never forget in college I had to get a subscription to the Wall Street Journal for this class I took, you would think that as far as papers went this one would be sort of stuffy, but actually I like the op eds and thought that some of the articles were very well researched and written. It was definitely a mans paper, evident by the tone in which it was written. Maybe I read to much into it,m but it certainly never sounded like the New York Times does when you read those pieces.
I liked receiving the Weekly Reader during the summer. I spent most of my time in the library reading when I was a kid and the Weekly Reader always gave me something else to read.
Interestingly, the Weekly Reader is still in publication, although it seems to be more of a supplement to another of their publications, called Scholastic News, now.
You know there was this other magazine that we would get from time to time called Highlights. It had this one regular cartoon called Goofus and Gallant, and some other regular features along with informational stories geared for younger kids. I see this magazine on occasion at my dentists office. As a kid this was one of the magazines that we used to get at the house. Even back then it was a rather expensive magazine. There was a point in time where the only other magazine that we would get is occasionally if my dad took us to the store he would let us get comic books. back in those days it cost like 25cents for a comic. I liked the scary ones, I would get ones like Swamp Thing and Tales from the Crypt. My sister like the Archie's and my brother was the one that started to get the Spider Man series. You know I read some of the older ones when my son was a kid and I have to say some of the story arch's were very good. I like the Clone Saga, and all of the Carnage series.
I don't remember the Weekly Reader, but at the school library there would always be a copy of the Boy Scouts monthly mag. Don't remember the name but it has some great comics within the pages.