Today in Ladybird history ...

Recently I've been having a lot of fun sending daily tweets along the lines of: on this day in history ... I find a historical fact and then illustrate it with a relevant picture from a Ladybird Book.

Here's are a couple of examples:

 

 

The problem is, the sources of historical 'facts' that help me to do this seem rather limited. Given the breadth of depth of the terrain that Ladybird Books covered, there is so much more scope than I can easily produce using this method alone.

The answer then, I thought, is to reverse the process: start with the books and then put together a calendar of events illustrated in Ladybird Books. This approach though, it turns out, also has its problems. Surprisingly, Ladybird Books are rather thin on dates.

Actually, perhaps that's not so surprising. The vim and gusto of writers such as L du Garde Peach always put narrative ahead of objective detail; telling a story way ahead of being objective. And that must be a large part of the reason why the History books were so incredibly successful for so long. They were easy to read and didn't feel like school. Why else would so many of us have chosen to part with our meager pocket money on them when we weren't forced to?

The result? Many an evening is now passed by me in front of the telly with a clutch of old Ladybird Books and access to the internet. I look for interesting events portrayed in Ladybird Books and then try to find a date for them. Last night, for example, I 'battled' my way through the Wars of the Roses, trying to find dates for the most interesting pictures in Warwick the Kingmaker. Little by little I'm trying to build up a calendar - so there's at least one for every day of the year.

 Sad? Perhaps. But I'm learning lots too.

 Frankly, working on this I'm in geeky Ladybird heaven!

Indoor Gardening - June Griffen-King

June Griffen-King only wrote one book for Ladybird, but that one is something of a classic. It was 'Indoor Gardening', published in 1969.

It was one of those books which, in my young eyes, was somehow indicative of how life should be. My half-term holidays should be spent doing elegant arrangements of minature plants within large glass bottles - not watching Scooby Doo and squabbling with my brother.

In a new page in the 'writers and Artists section of my website, I've added an interview with June Griffen-King about her experience working for Ladybird in the late 1960s.

Flight 7

The wonders of photoshop. No, dear Ladybird collector friends, you're quite right. There are only 6 books in the series. My son made it for me as a goodbye present.

Flight 7 - Helen goes to China

On Monday I'm off to China for 3 weeks. I'm leaving husband and son behind and am going with a Chinese friend.


Preparing for the trip, it occurred to me how little there is in all the Ladybird series about China, the most populous country on earth and the longest continuous civilisation. All the colour and drama and legends and heros and folklore.


All the inventions: paper, printing, gun-powder, the compass. The wonderful logographic script. Fine Ladybird fare, you'd have thought.

But all I can find is the curiously remote: Great Civilisations: China, a supporting role in Marco Polo and a couple of pictures of The Great Wall.


Why so little?


Well I suppose the first reason that in the 1960s and 1970s - the 'golden years' of Ladybird, China was still seen as pretty well closed to the outside world. After it's 'century of humiliation' and the internal strife between Republicans, Nationalists and Communists, China turned in on itself - and the rest of the world pretended it didn't exist.

Before that, perhaps the Korean War loomed large enough to make China look like a poor subject for Ladybird. China does at least have a 'Great Civilisations' book - and so fares much better than Japan. Presumably the trauma of the 2nd World War wiped Japan off Ladybird horizens?. But China seems very alien - very very remote from Ladybird Land - despite the Hong Kong connection.

At least Hong Kong gave us a few Ladybird Books in Chinese.

(Sadly these are not so good for my learning of the Chinese language - being written for the Hong Kong market they're written in the 'traditional' script of the islands rather than the 'simplified' script of the mainland. And if you're lucky enough to find one of the books accompanied by an audio cassette - being for the Hong Kong market they are in Cantonese, not Mandarin).

Anyway, I'm off tomorrow. Please wish me, as the Chinese say, favourable winds ...

Mummy through the decades

Recently I've been taking a closer look at how family members are shown across the decades in Ladybird Book. 'Mummy' in the 40s 50s and even 60s is often a very glamorous creature - very slender and with wonderfully coiffered hair and unsuitable clothes for the occasion. Here, on Mother's Day, is a summary: 'Mummy' through the decades in Ladybird Books

How to date Ladybird Books

As all collectors know, Ladybird Books can be harder than most to accurately date.  For the most part, the only date in a vintage Ladybird Book is on the title page - and that date is the date of the publication of the first edition, not the actual edition you have in your hand.  This is one of the reasons why so many Ladybird Books are falsely described as 'First Editions' on the internet and even in specialist bookshops.

On the other hand, once you have got your head around the basics, doing a bit of detective work can be part of the fun of collecting.  A collecting pal of mine, Andrew Brade, sent me a table that he uses to help date his books.  It uses guidelines you can find elsewhere (including in the 'How Old is my  Book' section of my website) - original price, tally numbers etc.  But it has been very neatly put together and might be useful to other people out there.  He tells me he is happy for me to share it so here it is:

Click on it to enlarge!

Peter and Jane - The Lost Episodes

Superficially similar to Miriam Elia's work (but actually very different) is this work of artist Jon Bentley: "Peter and Jane - The Lost Episodes".

What I like about this piece is that, once you get your head around it, you realise that it isn't a parody at all but an interpretation.

 I can just about remember what it felt like to look at one of the Key Word Readers, as a young child. You had the excitement and anticipation of moving on to a new book. The pictures were so vivid and the characters familiar. You felt that they had to contain something more vivid and absorbing than the stolid text suggested. There MUST be more going on, and if you looked at the picture for long enough you would see the hidden subtext. Perhaps Jane had actually had a row with Peter that morning and was sulking. Peter was planning to hide Daddy's hammer and Jane was considering whether to tell on him. What was the Policeman REALLy looking for? ...

The richness of the pictures in contrast with the key word-driven text seemed to insist that there HAD to be more to the scenario.

This contrast between the magical anarchy of a child's imagination and humdrum daily reality, for me, is what Jon Bentley has captured in his artwork. Here it is:

 The Lost Episodes

What do you think?