Peter, Pat, a life-jacket and the Beeb

The BBC are making a series of 4 programmes, hosted by Kirsty Young I think, exploring aspects of social change through children's books - or something like that.

Anyway, I was contacted by one of the programme team who had come across my website and had noted my article on the changes of family roles depicted in the original and revised versions of Peter and Jane.

After asking for my thoughts on father figures in Ladybird Books, I was asked if the BBC could borrow some of the books that show pictures like those in the article. So they sent up a very pleasant young lady to my house - who left with a box of books. There was no clear idea of how the books are going to find their way back home when filming is over, but this is the Beeb, so mine is not to reason why.

When I was thinking about which LB books would best depict ideas of fatherhood, it occurred to me that actually the Peter and Jane books are almost the last time that Ladybird dealt with the cosy nucleur family. From the late 60s on the new books that were published no longer focus on family life. Either non-fiction or fairy-tales or tales of animals (Hannibal the Hamster) or fruit and veg! (The Garden Gang) or science fiction. Even the next reading schemes avoid looking too closely at the family - Puddle Lane is vaguly set in fantasy distant past, late-Victorian England with Gruffles and Griffles. The children involved are always playing out on the street. The adults are neighbours or The Magician. The cats - Tim and Tessa - seem to be raised by a single-mother and even the parents of the mice are absent for most of the series. The Sandlewood Girl and Iron Boy are parentless and are sort-of adopted at the end.

It's as if, from the 1970s the cosy Peter and Jane family was no longer felt to be relevant, comfortable territory. But this was Ladybird - safe, national treasure - who could hardly bring out their own Ladybird version of "Jenny lives with Eric and Martin". So instead they averted their Ladybird eyes and focused elsewhere and anywhere else.

Oh, and the picture of Peter in a life-jacket is because the programme makers were also interested in depictions of how children's freedom becomes restricted. The picture of Peter paddling on the river was revised in the early 70s; the artist, Martin Aitchison, was asked to paint a life-jacket over the original picture (shown above).

I think the programmes are coming out some time in August - BBC2.

More on Peter and Jane

If the slideshow below isn't quite enough for you, you'll be relieved to here that I have just about completed the Gallery pages for the original Key Word Readers Books.

You'll find it here

I've also finished the Gallery pages for the 11 books in the Key Word series which I call the '1st Revision'.

You'll find them here.

Now, which series next? It would be logical to finish off the Key Word Readers - with the mid 70s editions. But I fancy a change ... Perhaps that wonderful nostalgia-fest which is series 563 ... or the History series ... or 'The Story of ...' series. So little time, so many Ladybird Books.

The Nature of Obsession

A visual discourse on the nature of obsessive hobbies (assisted by www.photofunia.com)

Last Word

I'm pleased to say that BBC Radio 4 decided to feature a Douglas Keen's life on the programme 'Last Word' this week.

I got a phone call on Wednesday asking if I'd be interviewed for the programme - apparently to give a bit of Ladybird 'context'. The programme featured some archive materials of Douglas Keen himself speaking, and an interview with his daughters and I found their contribution a fascinating insight into those years of Ladybird's greatest success.

I was late to my appointment at Broadcasting House having missed the train and then turning up at the wrong building. By the time I got the right building I was about 20 minutes late, out of breath and a little flustered. This helps to explain why I sound like Mary Poppins on speed. But here's the link to the programme on iPlayer. The Douglas Keen bit is the first feature.

Why the silence?

Douglas Keen was a remarkable man who lived a remarkable life. He was:

• visionary; arguably the main reason for the transformation of Ladybird from jobbing printers to publishing phenomenon
  
• the man who led Ladybird to enter the market of non-fiction and educational publishing
  
• the force behind the Peter and Jane reading scheme
  
• the only person to see Ladybird through from the early post-war days of the Bunnikins books through to the sale of the company to the Longman group in the 1970s
  
• an influence on the childhood of several generations of British children
  
• socially aware all his life and an advocate for women's rights
  
• a much loved family man and loyal friend
  

Yes, of course I'm an anorak when it comes to Ladybird Books but the achievments of this man transcend niche interest. Why hasn't the press picked up on any of this yet? Does anyone out there have any ideas about what can be done to get a little due tribute to be paid?

I attended his funeral on Thursday. Apparently Douglas Keen did not like funerals but this was a lovely, warm, friendly tribute to his life and his family had set up a corner of his house just as it would have been in the early 1950s with a letter on Wills & Hepworth headed notepaper in the old-fashioned typewriter and his hat on the desk - as you can see in the picture above. I was also shown an amazing prototype book; early on Keen could see a gap in the publishing market for well-produced children's non-fiction aimed at older children and which could be enjoyed by adults. Unable initially to convince the board of W&H to back his vision, he got his mother-in-law (herself trained as an artist) to produce some illustrations and himself wrote the text to create a mock up of the sort of book he had in mind.




The strategy worked; this was the prototype of 'British Birds and their Nests' and the beginning of a new and extraordinarily successful direction for Ladybird.

I hope to write a fuller account of this man and his life as soon as I can. In the meantime, you can read about Keen and 'The Ladybird Years' - part of the tribute spoken by his family at his funeral.

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!