these images may unlock some memories for you. ‘the mysteries of...
owen cyclops@owenbroadcast
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Aug 23, 2025
~1 min read
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these images may unlock some memories for you. ‘the mysteries of harris burdick’ was a children’s book from the 80s. the story inside is these pictures were brought to a publisher, then the artist disappeared. by the late 90s, many elementary schools used them as writing prompts:
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whats interesting from an education perspective is teachers often just told kids the story from the book as though it was real, and presented them with these images. students who were in elementary school around this time may remember this: almost a magical realism education.
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the within universe story in the book is the artist brought each of these images to a publisher, then promised to come back with a book for each image, but never did. so, each one just has a caption, then kids would complete or flesh out the story as they saw fit:
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anthroposophical and waldorf education catches some heat for things like presenting certain fairy tale things as real. this is an interesting parallel. these images were often presented with their in universe story - which is not true. but it made it 10,000x more engaging.
cool.
cool.
