It never rains in Ladybird Land

Recently it has been raining.  You may have noticed.
Raining a lot.

Of course, it never rains in Ladybird Land.  Ladybird Land is a place of eternal spring flowers and sunny picnics and games with boats down by the friendly river.

Well no.  Actually, it does rain.  But not a lot.  I went on a quest to find out how much it actually rains there.  Perhaps I didn't look in the right places - do let me know if I've missed the obvious, but this is what I've found so far.

The pictures above are from prayer books - prayers encouraging children not to grumble but to be thankful for rain.  A lesson for us all no doubt.

Of course, there's The Princess and the Pea.  Rain is bit essential to the story.  The same is true for The Sleepy Water Vole.





But, once again, it seems we have to turn to Peter and Jane for gritty social realism:

Ladybird Books, Twitter and social media

Ladybird Land feels a long way from the world of social media.

I've been using Twitter for many years and find it very useful for lots of different things.  In my work I found it a brilliant way of staying up to date with the latest developments and for swapping ideas and online resources.  But I didn't want to mix that up with communication with family and friends - so I made separate accounts and switched between them.  Never the twain.

Some years ago I also made a separate Ladybird Books Twitter account, to keep any tweets about Ladybird Books separate from both of the above.  But then I almost never used it.

And so @lbflyawayhome languished.

Just recently I've revived my Ladybird tweeting and have found it very useful.  It points me towards little snippets and websites that I can share easily on Twitter but which I'd probably never get around to blogging about. It's also nice to have a quick chat with other Ladybird Book enthusiasts.

Since it may be true that many Ladybird Book lovers aren't Twitter users, I can put these links up in a batch every now and then for anyone interested.



The other place to mention is Pinterest.  I've made a Pinterest board to collate Ladybird images I find online or ones I upload to different places:
http://www.pinterest.com/mollycoddle1/ladybird-books-loveliness/

As for Facebook, I just can't find a role for it.  I know that there are Ladybird Book 'groups' on Facebook, but it's just not me. 

Anyway:
Links I've tweeted about/found on Twitter that might be of interest:

Plans for the upcoming Ladybird centenury:
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/new-licensing-programme-ladybirds-100th.html

Ladybird parody:
http://londonist.com/2006/04/italica_and_jus.php

The Idyllic world of Peter and Jane:
http://ageofuncertainty.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/idyllic-world-of-peter-and-jane.html?m=1

A word from the editor:
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/martin-townsend/454709/A-word-from-the-Editor-Ladybird

Ladybird Books and Modernism:

http://dirtymodernscoundrel.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-ladybird-book-of-modernism.html