Zerna Addas Sharp (August 12, 1889 – June 17, 1981) was an American educator and book editor who is best known as the creator of the Dick and Jane series of beginning readers for elementary school-aged children.
Published by Scott, Foresman and Company of Chicago, Illinois, the readers, which described the activities of her fictional siblings, "Dick," "Jane," "Sally," and other characters, were widely used in schools in the United States and many other English-speaking countries for nearly forty years.
[1][4] Sharp created the characters and concept for the Dick and Jane readers, which were widely used in classrooms in the United States and in other English-speaking countries for nearly four decades before they were replaced with other reading texts.
[1][5][6] She came up with the idea for the beginning readers for elementary school children while working as a reading consultant and textbook editor for Scott, Foresman and Company, a publisher in Chicago, Illinois.
[7][8] Sharp worked with Gray to create the characters and primary readers that incorporated his input and used the whole-word or look-say method of word recognition (also called sight reading).
[9] The look-say method used a controlled vocabulary and taught readers to memorize the words through repetition, placing limited emphasis on teaching phonics.
[8] Sharp felt that the watercolor illustrations and texts should work together to provide stories that young readers would relate to and help them learn to read more easily.
The storylines that Sharp selected described the lives and experiences of a stereotypical American middle-class, white family in a two-parent suburban home that included three children and two pets.
Because the readers were made for nationwide distribution, the text and illustrations intentionally lacked references to specific regional geography such as mountains, rivers, lakes, plains, or the seashore.
[4][9] However, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, critics of the Dick and Jane readers began to point out its stereotypes; concerns about class, gender, and racial bias; and errors in content and illustrations.
[8] The Dick and Jane primers that Sharp edited, which were well known for their simple narrative text and watercolor illustrations, taught reading to millions of students for four decades.
Despite the challenges and criticisms of these readers, their content, and the look-say format they used to teach reading, Sharp's characters of "Dick," "Jane," and "Sally" became household words and the primers became icons of mid-century American culture, as well as collectors' items.