I don't remember a lot of religion in them, but it's been a while (almost 35 years!), so I could be mistaken.

I don't remember a religious bent, but I might have just kind of put that under "old-fashioned book." I don't recall what color the covers were.

I definitely remember that, in the Hebert Hoover one, his aunt and uncle spoke with "thee" and "thou" and so on.

But the 200 pages thing was consistent. Every single one, they somehow made it to exactly 200 pages.

I'm trying to figure out a way to google this series to find out if it had a name. So far, no luck.

They even had a "biography" for Virginia Dare, in which they made up an entire life for her after the Lost Colony disappeared, complete with an explanation for "CROATAN" carved on the tree.

how odd.I was just thinking of this series the other day. My sister read tons of them - and because a once a week library trip was no where near enough books, I read all her books to. The Virginia Dare one confused me completely -- because it was presented as"true" ( because it explained why some indians had blue eyes), but there was no way to prove it ---all just guess work.

DH remembers the one about John Deere

[link]

It looks like some one remember and resurrected the series "childhood of famous American series"

I wonder if that woman was even slightly prepared for the hammering turn that interview took. She made my eyebrows raise with this:

As I mentioned previously, so few changes need to be made in the books, on average, that no one has ever objected.

Of course I want to know who did object, making her need the "on average."

The Virginia Dare one confused me completely -- because it was presented as"true" ( because it explained why some indians had blue eyes), but there was no way to prove it ---all just guess work.

I remember this one-- it was like a fable "And that's how Indians got blue eyes"!

Wow, I never ran across that series.

Getting to exactly 200 pages is actually pretty easy -- there are all sorts of tricks you can play with typography and layout, not to mention the wholesale cutting of chapters and illustrations. Writer friends of mine were dismayed to find that the work-for-hire children's book they'd written had 60 pages cut out by the editor because the covers, pre-printed as the MS was being turned in, had an accidentally narrowed spine, which meant it could only fit X number of pages.

Less than 3 hours to the weekend.

I can make it there. Barely. I think.

My main familiarity of Pocohantas comes from the Neil Young song.