Life — July 2, 1925 — page 34: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a four-panel comic strip featuring "Skippy," a mischievous child character. The satire targets children's boredom and literacy attitudes in early 20th-century America. **The joke:** Skippy encounters a "terrible book" that reads silly backwards, then wanders aimlessly. He discovers the public library as a place to "kill an hour"—initially framing reading as time-wasting rather than enrichment. The punchline subverts this: he ultimately decides to go home and read anyway, suggesting that even reluctant children find reading appealing once engaged. The strip gently mocks both children's resistance to reading and the era's concerns about youth idleness. It also reflects period attitudes about public libraries as accessible refuges for entertainment, not just serious scholarship. Skippy's character—a working-class street kid in shabby clothes and newsboy cap—represents the common urban child of the era.