JD asks about good books for children:
My little nephew is learning to read, and I want to provide him with good reading material in the years ahead. I remember you referring to the introductory books about Greek philosophers you read as a child, such as Aristotle and Demosthenes, and I was wondering if you remembered the titles of this series or who printed them.
I can’t and I find that very annoying. They were a series of mid-sized hardcovers without dust jackets; each book was a different color and was arranged according to theme. Tom Brown’s School Days and some Jack London was included in the brown book, while abridged Greek classics were in the green one. I think poetry was orange. The trim was always black. If anyone can identify this series, I’d really love to know what it was. I seem to recall there were somewhere between eight and twelve books in it.
UPDATE: CL nails it precisely. Based on the cover images I’ve seen, ours must have been the 1960 deluxe edition:
I believe that the set you referred to in your blog was The New Junior Classics published by Collier. My parents had a set that I read when I was a child in the 50’s, and I later bought an earlier (and superior) set published in 1938 for my son as part of my scheme to shield him from our contemporary anti-intellectual, anti-male cultural milieu, I hope with some success, as he is presently a National Merit Scholar and first year Physics major on full scholarship at Baylor) .
The set can be found in book stores and obtained at Amazon.
I am almost disturbingly excited about finally learning this. It’s interesting what one remembers, as ten volumes would appear to be right between eight and twelve. Highly recommended.