In and Out with Dick and Jane: A Loving Parody

More like gettin' screwed . . . nice illustrations but no substance if you know what I mean, just innuendo and lots of it . . . don't waste your time or money.

Hysterical. The more you read it the more you notice in the illustrations.

Fair

I expected more jokes from this, something along the lines of Politically Correct Fairy Tales, but no, it's actually very simple and no more interesting than the original. The author just didn't dare to go all the way with this joke.

Wasn't what I was looking for

IN AND OUT WITH DICK AND JANE is a 96-page hardcover book, providing a parody of the Dick and Jane books that were used, during the 1950s and early 1960s, for teaching English in elementary schools in America. In the years, 1957-1958, I was required to read from the Dick and Jane books. This was at Edgewood School in New Haven, Connecticut. I still remember reading from one of these books, where I encountered the sentence, "Oh, oh, oh." I read the words just like they were spelled, and I made sure to pronounce the letter "h" by making a little puff of air after the sound of the letter "o." I don't think that the teacher told us that the letter "h" is supposed to be silent. Anyway, the old Dick and Jane books provided a whitewashed view of society, where the worst thing that ever happened was getting an owee on your knee while riding your tricycle. In the old Dick and Jane books, racial prejudice never occurred, fathers never owned guns and never hunted animals, parents were never alcoholics, priests never molested little boys, and everybody was totally clueless on how babies were made.Today (Dec. 30, 2018), I bought "In and Out with Dick and Jane" and instantly fell in love with it. In this parody book, the graphics style (pastel chalk drawings, or possibly watercolor) is the same as in the original Dick and Jane books, except that the characters are doing different things, such as manufacturing cocaine in a home laboratory (page 15), or smiling and sitting on their front porch while handling hunting rifles and assault weapons (page 9), or where the picture shows a husband and wife who each are cross-dressers (page 11), or where at Christmas time, neighbors gather in front of the only house without Christmas decorations and prepare to conduct a cross-burning in front of the house (page 18-19), or showing a priest putting his hand on a boy's shoulder with the boy expressing shock and surprise (page 29). Every picture is accompanied by a sentence of text, where the nature of the text is that it describes only wholesome thing while, in contrast, the picture shows an un-wholesome thing.There is a chapter called, "A DAY IN SCHOOL" (pages 35-48) where one of the pictures shows happy kids running towards a vending machine, where the text reads, "Lunchtime is our favorite. School has the best lunches." But the vending machine has only bags of candy in it. The chapter "A DAY AT THE FAIR" has a page making fun of unsafe amusement park rides, reading, "Time for the rides. Daddy asks the carny lots of questions about bolts and the bare wires and the duct tape." (Anybody can consult YouTube for videos about frequent deaths caused by amusement park rides.) The next page has illustrations showing that the "carny" (the man operating the ride) taking revenge on Daddy by giving him an extra long ride on the scary, unsafe ride. The chapter "AFTER SCHOOL" has a picture shows mother passed out, with liquor bottles on the floor, with two kids tip-toeing past. The text reads, "Be quiet. Billy's mom is sleeping. She smells funny."SUMMARY. The graphics are excellent and use exactly the same style as in the original Dick and Jane books. The subject matter takes a close, hard look at the gritty underside of present-day society, revealing continuing issues that simply refuse to go away, such as, use of recreational drugs, wild animals choking on waste products made of plastic, commercial advertisers infesting the public schools by way of educational programs about, for example, history or science, and where the program includes a sponsorship advertisement, the issue of priests molesting little boys, the issue of alcoholic parents, the issue of widespread use and acceptance of assault rifles in ordinary neighborhoods, addiction to using credit cards, and violence against certain religious groups. Anybody with even the slightest knowledge current events will realize and understand that this book provides a very truthful, very clever, and very palatable account of present-day issues in American society.

This is such a funny book! Must read for people who grew up with Dick and Jane! When we were kids, we always felt that we WERE Dick, Jane and Sally (kids in our family: older brother, middle sister, younger sister, all 2 years apart). My sister (Sally character) always complained that she didn't have a huge role in the books or in our family (being the baby, of course--complaining as only babies in a family are prone to do--stated by the middle sister of course). In this book all 3 kids have adventurous roles. Wouldn't it be a scream if our neighborhood were really like the Parody Dick, Jane and Sally's--and don't forget Spot, of course! We'd all have such a more interesting childhood. Ooh---dangerous! P.S. I'm ordering this for my little sister for Christmas so that she can see that even baby Sally is just as important as big brother and sister, Dick and Jane.

I'm surprised this hasn't been tried before. The two curly mops have been a part of popular culture for decades, so maybe the National Lampoon or Mad have delivered the goods in the past or maybe the copyright holders have threatened to unleash their legal rottweilers on anyone who tried to sully the brand. The back cover has a disclaimer that the contents have not been prepared, approved or authorized by the trademark owners.Well, at last Dick and Jane have arrived in the real world, Mom, Dad and Dick are toting deadly weapons (page 9) that nice neighbor Mr Franco could be a made guy as Dick and Jane help him carry out a heavy rolled-up carpet from the garage (page 21) Dick's friend Billy has his own door key and his mom is a lush and smells funny (page 59) but they do get to dress up with her clothes and make-up (page 65) Jane's friend Sally enjoys her visit to the countryside and is happy to spear a frog (page 89) Dick and Jane like school where the learn about the ins and outs of their sex organs (page 37) their neighborhood is pretty cool, too, with an alarming number of homes on their street with FOR SALE signs.All this fun is delivered in the style of the genuine books with Ross MacDonald's colorful illustrations pretty close to the real thing. Oddly there are nine pages that are black and white only. The ninety-six pages flash by all too quickly and for this I would fault the book. There could have been a few more pages before the idea gets over done, so four stars.###LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

fair - not as good as expected.