So I've put together a slideshow of some of these unwitting villains. Did you feel the same about any of them?
Saturday, 25 April 2015
Further Fear in Ladybird Land
In my last post, I talked about the fairy tale characters that frightened us most as children. These characters were all story book 'villains' - designed to be scary. However, as I said last time, children can often respond to concepts and images in ways that adults don't predict. In the 15 years that I've been documenting Ladybird Books (and readers' responses to them), I've heard from lots of people who tell me they were terrified of things in the books which were NOT intended to alarm. Some of these alternative fears come up repeatedly.
So I've put together a slideshow of some of these unwitting villains. Did you feel the same about any of them?
So I've put together a slideshow of some of these unwitting villains. Did you feel the same about any of them?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Great stuff!
The Ladybird illustration that bothered me was the terrifyingly bleak final illustration in the Ladybird Book Of Arms and Armour. That image, of bedraggled survivors being told to go away by an armed man, equally distressed, whilst under a lowering sky, a mushroom cloud erupts in the distance, chilled me to the bone. The 'Cold War' was going on, and getting hotter - and this was just too close for comfort.
Good point, Brian. And you're not alone - a lot of us remember this one the same way. Perhaps I should have included that pic. But maybe it's still a bit too chilling for a jocular blog-post ...
Post a Comment