Tuesday 6 February 2007

Jane!



'Jane' of the Peter and Jane reading scheme books was my heroine. She is the same age as me - but was never like me as a child. She always looked so neat and trim, with here little white frock and yellow cardigan. Sometimes, like here, she scrubbed up nicely and wore a party frock. And she was always getting bought dolls - and they always looked crisp and new. Her dolls never had ratty, matted hair and bald patches from botched attempts at hairdressing. Her own hair never had sticky-up bits like mine. She never wore thick tights which wrinkled around her ankles.

Oh the magic of unwrapping Christmas presents at this age. This picture sums up my first recollection of envy!

2 comments:

Lark said...

Hi Helen,

I was delighted to see your blog. I am a huge Ladybird lover. I remember them being around when I grew up (the 1970s) but don't have many specific memories. I discovered them more as a teenager for their wonderful illustrations, being a big fan of vintage design, and have loved and collected them ever since. My favourites are the 563 series (The Party etc.) and Peter & Jane.

I'm a designer, I have a design company called Lark(www.larkdesigns.co.uk) and I make one-off gifts from old Ladybird books (tatty ones of course), which have been quite popular. There must be a lot of us out there! I have recently moved to Australia and there are a lot of fans out here too.

I have recently started posting some old Ladybirds onto Flickr, as part of the Vintage Children's Books group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/vintagechildrensbooks/). I'm putting a link to your site on my blog and will keep 'tuning in'.

All the best - it's very exciting to have a Ladybird blog!

Allison

Helen said...

Your mirrors and magnets are lovely, Allison.