A study examined the historical development of the Cathedral Basic Readers (a.k.a. the Dick and Jane readers), a special edition used to teach reading in Catholic schools. Three questions served as a guiding framework: (1) what factors led to the creation, development, and discontinuance of this Reader series? (2) what were the differences between the Basic Readers and the Cathedral Readers? and (3) how did the Basic and Cathedral editions change across time periods? Data sources included archival manuscripts, interview transcripts, and the two reading textbook series. Results indicated that the number of text differences increased and the picture differences over the Cathedral editions were more frequent in first and second grade texts. The representation of different races and ethnic groups was more common in third grade books over the editions and most frequent in the 1963 Cathedral edition. In addition to replacing stories in terms of fidelity to Catholic principles, occasionally words were changed or illustrations modified to reflect the average American Catholic home. Findings suggest that the Basic and Catholic books for each paired edition were quite similar. (CR)