Do you still have some of your old Weekly Reader Book Club titles? I do, and wish I had kept them all. How many tens of millions of kids do you suppose have fed their growing appetite for reading with these prolific, durable books? With some happy exceptions, most are not great literature, but many are still good stories, and they are widely available at thrift stores.
Jane Resh Thomas's The Comeback Dog is a good case in point: a short, very serviceable boy and dog story, published in 1981. Virtues of thrift, responsibility and quality workmanship are affirmed without preaching. And where else these days is a kid going to hear the phrase "going like sixty!"?
