The New McGuffey First Reader has been prepared in conformity with the latest and most approved ideas regarding the teaching of reading, and its lessons embody and illustrate the best features of the word, the phonic, and the sentence or thought methods. While all the stories in this book are new, or have been rewritten especially for its pages, care has been taken to preserve the distinguishing characteristics which have given to the McGuffey Readers their unparalleled popularity and usefulness.