(I was going to put this under Book Hauls but my post turned into a small essay so I decided to give it a thread because I am sure others have similar memories.)
Ladybird Books, the Door to a Perfect World
I had just started school. The country was still to an extent in a state of post war flux. We moved a lot so life lacked stability. I knew it was out there though. At age six a door opened at school it was a Ladybird book called “Helping at Home”.
There was this family, mother, father, boy and girl, it was all so bloody perfect. Sixty years on I still admire, maybe even lust a little, for that ruby lipped mother with her constant kindly supervision.
And the Father, pipe smoking and always making, doing or gardening. And the kids always smiling, loving every new experience like little ducks to water.
That was it. My first taste of the world of Ladybird Books, a library shelf full of positive experience. I went there, heck I ran there.
Next there was ladybird book of Garden Flowers, with its magical almost mythological illustrations, by John Leigh-Pemberton as it happens. What a place for a young child to go, those colourful scented gardens with their Greek statuary. I think it set me on the road to becoming an artist, the idea that you could sit with a piece of canvas or paper and actually make places to be. The places I paint now are highly abstracted but those illustrations were the seed.
Later, as 1950’s boys were wont to do, I turned to science “Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries” featuring probably the same two kids, just a little older now, still smiling with joy at every experiment and disovery. Neckties, hair combed and teeth brushed. Bless ‘em.
And so it went on. Kings and Queens, Railways, The story of Furniture, Samuel Pepys, Napoleon, All about Metals, even How to Build a Radio. Everything it seemed was there in those slim little volumes.
In retrospect one can see how they were trying to build a new clean bright Britain after the horrors of the war. A shot of optimism about how things could be, shielding the new generation from the past and pointing it forward.
Recently at a charity shop I bought a box of 150 of them. What a delight that was. Cheap as chips too because it seems these days people value neither books nor nostalgia. And nostalgia there was, in spades.
The range it seems went on to broaden even more, as some titles after my era confirm. Come to Holland, Nuclear power, Working in a Hotel, (which may or may not relate to Holland) and a few that I imagine were less than popular like “Public Services Water Supply” and “The Customs Officer”. Though even those are more interesting than you might expect, that is the ladybird magic.
They are up there with those other nostalgia fests, Observers books and Brooke Bond Tea card albums, anyone remember collecting “Wild flowers” and “Tropical Birds?”
However I am delighted with having snagged this collection and am still learning from them.
Bite sized pieces of education, take one at bedtime and expand your mind regardless of age.
Would I go back to those days of post war positivism? In a flash.
Ladybird Books, the Door to a Perfect World
I had just started school. The country was still to an extent in a state of post war flux. We moved a lot so life lacked stability. I knew it was out there though. At age six a door opened at school it was a Ladybird book called “Helping at Home”.
There was this family, mother, father, boy and girl, it was all so bloody perfect. Sixty years on I still admire, maybe even lust a little, for that ruby lipped mother with her constant kindly supervision.
And the Father, pipe smoking and always making, doing or gardening. And the kids always smiling, loving every new experience like little ducks to water.
That was it. My first taste of the world of Ladybird Books, a library shelf full of positive experience. I went there, heck I ran there.
Next there was ladybird book of Garden Flowers, with its magical almost mythological illustrations, by John Leigh-Pemberton as it happens. What a place for a young child to go, those colourful scented gardens with their Greek statuary. I think it set me on the road to becoming an artist, the idea that you could sit with a piece of canvas or paper and actually make places to be. The places I paint now are highly abstracted but those illustrations were the seed.
Later, as 1950’s boys were wont to do, I turned to science “Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries” featuring probably the same two kids, just a little older now, still smiling with joy at every experiment and disovery. Neckties, hair combed and teeth brushed. Bless ‘em.
And so it went on. Kings and Queens, Railways, The story of Furniture, Samuel Pepys, Napoleon, All about Metals, even How to Build a Radio. Everything it seemed was there in those slim little volumes.
In retrospect one can see how they were trying to build a new clean bright Britain after the horrors of the war. A shot of optimism about how things could be, shielding the new generation from the past and pointing it forward.
Recently at a charity shop I bought a box of 150 of them. What a delight that was. Cheap as chips too because it seems these days people value neither books nor nostalgia. And nostalgia there was, in spades.
The range it seems went on to broaden even more, as some titles after my era confirm. Come to Holland, Nuclear power, Working in a Hotel, (which may or may not relate to Holland) and a few that I imagine were less than popular like “Public Services Water Supply” and “The Customs Officer”. Though even those are more interesting than you might expect, that is the ladybird magic.
They are up there with those other nostalgia fests, Observers books and Brooke Bond Tea card albums, anyone remember collecting “Wild flowers” and “Tropical Birds?”
However I am delighted with having snagged this collection and am still learning from them.
Bite sized pieces of education, take one at bedtime and expand your mind regardless of age.
Would I go back to those days of post war positivism? In a flash.
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