What's on in Ladybird Land

There are a lot of exhibitions taking place connected with Ladybird's so-called 'Centenary' year.

It's quite hard to keep track of what has happened, what has been planned and what's on.
I thought a round-up might be helpful.

1) The 'Ladybird by Design' exhibition took place in Bexhill at the De La Warr Pavilion between January and May this year.  So that's now finished ... but ...

2) ...  The House of Illustration is currently hosting the same exhibition - or most of it - near Kings Cross in London.  The rooms are smaller and so far the beautiful parade of book (my books!) haven't been exhibited yet for lack of space, but I understand that they will be displayed any day now, as another exhibition comes to an end and the space is freed up.

This incarnation of the LbD exhibition is on until the end of September but if you can come on the evening of Thursday 30th of July please do!  That's when I'm meant to be heading up an 'informal evening' talking about the impact of Ladybird.  Here's how it's advertised:

I wasn't sure how the Bexhill exhibition would translate to a much smaller venue - but actually I liked the arrangement.  The smaller rooms encourage you to get up closer to the artwork and - since the pieces were designed to be viewed in detail close up - this works very well.

3) The Charnwood Museum in Loughborough is having its own exhibition.  Loughborough is the home of Ladybird and from the pictures I've seen so far it looks very good:

I hope to visit later this week so I'll review then.

4)  On the subject of Loughborough, Angel Yard, the birth place of Ladybird, has been awarded a 'Green Plaque'. The unveiling ceremony is on Wednesday 29th of June and I hope to be there.







5) Finally, there is another exhibition: 100 Years of Ladybird, which opened last week and the British Schools Museum.  This is in my county of Hertfordshire, in Hitchin.  If you live locally, do drop by.  The only building is interesting and the staff are friendly.

The exhibition, though small, has been put together with an eye for detail and tender loving care.  When I was there I didn't get a chance to see the original school rooms there - but I imagine they're interesting too.

If you know of anything else Ladybird related that's on now or is being planned, do let me know

Ladybird artists: What's so special about ... John Kenney?

Not long ago, I wrote about what it was that had led me to enjoy and appreciate the Ladybird artwork of C F Tunnicliffe.  So, in a similar vein, here's a very personal introduction to John Kenney. (This isn't a biography - you'll find one of those here).

So - what (for me) is so special about John Kenney?

1) The variety of styles that he was master of

Probably Kenney saw himself primarily as an artist specialising in equestrian scenes in his native Leicestershire.  

But it's as the illustrator of Ladybird's  Robin Hood, The Circus Comes to Town, The History series books (most of them) and Tootles the Taxi that he is likely to be best remembered.

 

He adopted such different styles in these different series.  You could never say he was formulaic - and each painting style reflected the different intended reader and tenor of the text.

2) The magical partnership that made the History series (s.561) so successful

Kenney teamed up with L du Garde Peach in 1956 to produce the first History book: 'Alfred the Great'.

Together they worked on a further 28 books (the last being 'The Pilgrim Fathers' in 1972) before the ill-health of both artist and author broke up the alliance.  Peach approached the recounting of history with vigour and verve - matched perfectly by the energy of Kenney's artwork.  

From letters I have seen, the two men genuinely liked each other and bounced ideas back and forth between themselves in the course of developing a book - each man keen to do the other justice in what the produced.

3) The mood and atmosphere of the 'History' books.

It's hard to choose, but I think it's the sombre pictures that most capture my imagination.  The isolation and desolation of the defeated King John, the grim starkness of the battlefield where Warwick the Kingmaker met his end, the moody melancholy of the muddy road to Yorkshire ...

4) The joy of story-telling through pictures - especially through the facial expressions of characters. 

At times it's this body-language which often carries 'the plot' more confidently than the text itself.

5) The use of colour 

It's always worth trying to get the oldest copies you can of the earliest books - when the colour-reproduction was most true to Kenney's artwork.  The soft blue hues of Alfred the Great, for example, give a far-away quality to the tale - and make me think of early films in colour.

6) Tootles the Taxi 

Who remembers Tootles as a Taxi as a child and doesn't love this book?  Kenney makes it look easy - but the blend of cute anthropomorphism and realistic street scene isn't easy to achieve.  Kenney, having honed this style on Tootles, went on to illustrate a number of the classic 'Railway Series books' ('Thomas the Tank Engine' books) for the Reverend W Awdry.

Tootles the Taxi is among the all-time best-loved of all books produced by Wills & Hepworth.  For this reason, it was the book chosen to be re-issued in facsimile as a farewell memento for staff in 1999, when the Loughborough works were finally closed down.

7) Nostalgia

Some of the images from the History series books are among my earliest and most vivid memories from childhood.  I looked at the pictures for a long time. Of course I did.  The pictures were crammed with detail, they were colourful and engaging.  They demanded that I 'read' them as I read the text - and in this way they etched themselves on my memory.  It was the pictures that hooked me in to the story.  First the pictures, then the story,  leading imperceptibly to an interest in history itself.

Judging from the number of people who have, over the years, told me that their love of history, choice of degree subject or even career was influenced by these books, I was far from alone.

A slice of humble pie

As I said in my last post, I don't believe a Ladybird Book ever existed where, in teaching the alphabet, 'A' stood for Armoured Train. Daft notion.

Although a rumour of its existence has circulated for years, I've seen how such anecdotes can be started from  a stray comment and quickly pass into lore.  Of course it was nonsense.  No one repeating the story could ever provide any evidence.  How come no one actually seemed to own this book? Even if the book is rare, why no pictures anywhere?

That's what I thought until last night.  And then, only days after sticking my neck out and mentioning this story for the first time on this blog, I came across the book itself.  Yes, it exists.  And do you know what? It was on my own bookshelf all the time!

Pre-1940s Ladybird Series books are hard to find.  They were issued in the days when Wills & Hepworth didn't consider themselves to be a publisher - but printed a few children's books from time to time among a wide range of other materials that made up their 'core' business.  Brian Alderson, co-author of 'The Ladybird Story', has researched these early books and found that it is very rare to find more than one copy of the same title.  I've picked up very few of them over the years of my collecting - no more than half-a-dozen in total - and I too have only rarely seen the same copy twice, even online.

So what are the chances that I would happen to find that I myself own the mystery book? And why didn't I realise before?

The Alphabet section is squeezed into a few pages of a book called "Pixie Tales", a chunky annual-sized volume crudely printed on coarse paper. Although of course I've looked several times through the random collection of tales and poems that it contains, until last night I'd missed the Alphabet part. And actually I found the whole thing fascinating. 

Putting a date to it has proved to be a bit of an enigma though.  I won't say now why I think it's an enigma - but below you'll find a number of pictures from the book.  What do you think? When would you say it dates from?

'A' is for ... Ambulance?

'A' isn't always for 'apple'.  The question is, was 'A' ever for 'Armoured Train' ? (Bear with me; this IS leading somewhere).

There were lots of different Alphabet books produced by Ladybird over the years and there's a story that circulates in Ladybird circles that in one early book, presumably a war-time or post-war book,  'A' stood for 'Armoured Train' (or sometimes 'Armoured Car').  Now although I've heard this repeated many times and in many different places, and, although it makes a good story, I've never thought it likely.  I've never seen an actual picture of this book as proof that it ever existed and I own copies of all the Alphabet books  that I know of. 

 But recently I came across a very early Ladybird Series book, (1920s) and in it I discovered that 'A' stood for 'Ambulance Train'.

It might not be 'Armoured Train' but it offers just as much insight: a view of the long shadow cast by The Great War on society, long after 1918.  I didn't even know what an Ambulance Train was, so looked it up.  What I read was moving.

http://www.worldwar1postcards.com/ambulance-trains.php

You'll find more here:

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/features/features/10860699.Trains_that_put_First_World_War_wounded_on_track/

This Ladybird Series book was probably not printed before 1924, so at least 6 years after the end of World War One.  Sometimes it's the tiny details of daily life that can offer a glimpse into the past: a past where the term 'Ambulance Train' was seen as such a familiar piece of vocabulary that it was suitable for a child's alphabet book.

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?

Martin Aitchison and the Bexhill Exhibition

Do you recognise any of the books in this picture?  You probably do.  These are just some of the books illustrated by the wonderful Martin Aitchison - one of the most versatile and prolific of all 'Golden Age' Ladybird artists.

I feel strongly that not enough attention has been paid to Martin.  Although he is, I believe, the only one of the major Golden Age artists still living, and although he is in great shape for his 95 years, it's rare to find an article or feature in the media that features him extensively.  Even in Ladybird's latest offering: the book Ladybird by Design, the page on him comes straight from the biography on his website and involved no direct communication.

If you think this sounds strange, I should mention that Martin suffers from profound hearing problems. If you feel this still doesn't explain things, then you think as I do.

Anyway, the good news is that Martin is going to visit the De La Warr Pavilion Ladybird Book exhibition on Friday (24th April) in Bexhill-on-Sea.  I'm going too so if you're free on Friday and live nearby perhaps you could come and say hello.  We'll be getting to the Pavilion at about 12.30 so if you're there, don't be shy.  Come and say hello to him.

Martin is intelligent and humorous.  He lip-reads well and has friends and family who can support him with communication.  In today's world, hearing loss should be no barrier to telling your story, especially when the story is as interesting as Martin's.

Frightened of a Ladybird - part 1

Children's responses to things can often be surprising.  My son, for example, would sit cheerfully through the most alarming scenes of Doctor Who but then was kept awake for night after night after a particular episode of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Recently on Twitter I ran a 'contest' to establish which Ladybird villain had proved the scariest in childhood.  I ran the contest as a knock-out challenge, presenting people with the villains two by two, eliminating one at a time. Feelings ran high - everyone seemed convinced that the character that scared them most MUST have awakened a similar response in everyone else.  Almost everyone who 'voted' ended their message with something like: 'obviously' 'naturally' or 'no contest'.  There WAS a contest;  almost all these 'knock-out rounds' were extremely close.

Here's a poll so you can register your vote too.  This time it's an open, 8-way choice.  It will be interesting to see if an 'open' vote reaches the same conclusion as did the 'knock-out' vote.

Click here to vote


So what themes emerged from this about the nature of childhood fears (she says, trying to clothe this utterly pointless but pretty enjoyable exercise in a thin layer of psychological analysis)?

1) Fear of the wolf, especially of wolves that lie deep in a dark forest and that disguise themselves as people we love.  I'll leave further analysis of this one to the grown-ups.

2) The pointy, waspiness of Rumpelstiltskin seemed to trouble people.  His skinny little legs and pointy features in those stripy tights.  Is that about getting a wasp sting in early life?

3) Things that lie under bridges.  The Bridge Troll seemed to be many people's big fear.  Even though he had big, soft round eyes and a rather daft expression many people said that they still feel uncomfortable crossing bridges even today.  Maybe another manifestation of the fear of the creature lurking under the bed?

4) Anger.  People seemed to be very troubled by the furious anger of some characters, even when those characters didn't seem to have any particular power to do harm.  There was the pointy finger of the bad fairy in Sleeping Beauty, the furious stamping of Rumpelstiltskin. But the most notable example of this was the angry dwarf in Snow White and Rose Red.  When I put him into the contest I didn't really expect him to put up much of a challenge - but the response to him surprised me.  He lost his particular round (to the eventual overall winner) but those people who voted for him responded very badly to his elimination: there was much sulking and verbal huffing, (all very unLadybird).  By eliminating the angry dwarf, it was tantamount to deriding his power over our emotions  - and to some, that mattered.

I had to think about this one.  Why did that ill-tempered but pretty useless little hominid provoke such a strong reaction in so many?  I wonder if it's got something to do with the powerlessness a child feels when confronted with (what seems like) irrational and uncontrolled anger in adults; ie from the people we expect to be rational and controlled?

Enough!  I don't mean to give you nightmares. Here is a soothing picture to end on.  

It's from many people's favourite childhood book: Tootles the Taxi. Illustrations by John Kenney, who also illustrated Thomas the ... Tank ... Engi.. ...