Now, whether this miraculously-surviving reading list dates from the last half of Mike's first year of school or from the first half of my first year of school is a moot point. It scarcely matters, because it probably hadn't changed much. McQueeney used texts from the Forties to the Sixties; big themes then were the suburban family, the cowboy/frontier legacy, and of course the ever-popular animal adventures (both tame and wild). I have fond if vague memories of the Woodland Frolics Series; there is actually a copy of "Chippy Chipmunk's Vacation", a number in the series, in the family archives.
But the story I really, really remember is "The Straw Ox", from the "I Know a Story" reader. I already loved "The Wizard of Oz" from the movie; I think I recognized a relation here in the straw ox that the old couple builds and covers with tar and sets out in the field to graze. Various wild animals attack the ox and get caught in the tar and must pay the penalty before the couple releases them. Rather like the Tar Baby, but the Straw Ox was actually alive and could speak. I learned later that it is an old Russian fairy tale.
I was surprised and pleased that I was able to find pictures of all these books. Whether "Story Fun" is actually "Fun in Story" written in teacherly short hand is a sticky point, but "Fun in Story" is the only reader I can find close to it.
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