The Enid Blyton Society

I too was raised on Ladybird books.Like me, I'm sure you enjoyed some of their lovely illustrations.


The Policeman;

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Ladybird books formed a large part of my childhood, I still have a large number tucked away in my attic. I learnt to read at an early age with the Peter and Jane books plus their faithful companion Pat the Dog, although flash cards were also involved. Many schools also used Ladybird books as teaching aids, a fine antidote indeed to the American SRA cards which I treated with great suspicion due to their slightly different spellings of certain words!

The enormous number of subjects covered by the Ladybird book range fired my interest in many subjects, I even built myself a crystal set at the age of nine thanks to one particular volume that covered radio construction.

These slim volumes would have been a fine vehicle for many of Enid Blyton's short stories, did this ever take place I wonder?

I noticed these ones in the cave Petermax...

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Splendid!

Great programme - thoroughly reccomended!

Viv

I really enjoyed the programme. I remembered a lot of the books featured from my childhood. My favourite was a fiction title "The Discontented Pony", another title in that series was "The Wise Robin", I must dig it out and it read it again. It is a lovely Christmas story.

I also enjoyed this superb programme and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in children's books.

Despite highlighting it in the Radio Times, I forgot to watch it

I watched it and enjoyed it immensely. I, too, can remember some of the covers, I had the Ladybird Book Of Motor Cars amongst others. Sadly, I let them all go many years ago. What I was really impressed by was the superb illustrations in the books, credit must go to those artists who created such wonderful pictures.

Eddie Muir wrote:We have also been buying some of the new editions and have accumulated quite a lot more from various newspapers that offer them in exchange for collecting their printed tokens.

I'm glad the value of Ladybird books is still recognised, Eddie, though I don't think Ladybird do such a wide range of titles these days.

pete9012S wrote:The Policeman;

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Heh - I suppose the spoof text was inspired by the picture, which does make the policeman look like a giant:

This is Police Constable Brian Plectrum. He is 66 feet tall. PC Plectrum often stands in the centre of London looking out for criminals. Sometimes a police helicopter will arrive to deliver sandwiches and wave hello.

Petermax wrote:Many schools also used Ladybird books as teaching aids, a fine antidote indeed to the American SRA cards which I treated with great suspicion due to their slightly different spellings of certain words!

We also used SRA cards at school and I enjoyed doing them, but few learning aids could match the beauty of Ladybird books. I only encountered Ladybird books at home and in the local library so they were never associated with school for me.

Kate Mary wrote:I really enjoyed the programme. I remembered a lot of the books featured from my childhood. My favourite was a fiction title "The Discontented Pony", another title in that series was "The Wise Robin", I must dig it out and it read it again. It is a lovely Christmas story.

I thought the programme was fabulous, as the people interviewed had so much enthusiasm and affection for the books. I'm sorry L. Du Garde Peach's idiosyncrasies were toned down in later editions of the 'Adventures from History' series, and I agree with collector Helen Day who asked why people flock to see the Mona Lisa yet give so little attention to the paintings which were done for the Ladybird books! The picture she singled out has always been my favourite - the one by Eric Winter of Cinderella weeping because her sisters have gone to the ball without her (Cinderella, 'Well-loved Tales' series):

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Striking composition, breathtaking colours and full of emotion.

Kate, I also liked The Discontented Pony and The Wise Robin as a child although the titles I loved best in that series were Ned the Lonely Donkey, Tiptoes the Mischievous Kitten and Mick the Disobedient Puppy. Heartwarming stories with gorgeous illustrations.

Katharine wrote:Despite highlighting it in the Radio Times, I forgot to watch it

If you have time to catch up with it, Katharine, the programme is on iplayer until 9.59 PM on Sunday 29th December:

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I was interested that the size of the books was determined by wartime paper shortages, with the 52 pages being designed to fit on one large sheet of paper which was then folded and cut accordingly. It was fascinating to see Douglas Keen's massive prototype of British Birds and their Nests, followed by the actual-size mock-up, and to hear about the shop window displays that were created to promote the books, e.g. stuffed birds on tree branches for British Birds and their Nests. It seems that Douglas Keen played a large part in making Ladybird books such a success.

From time to time I've used a website called "The wee web" to help identify approximately what year my Ladybird books were printed. It also had a complete list of every Ladybird book ever published, and which series it was from, which was a great help to me to know what to keep an eye out for. I've just tried to access it and it doesn't seem to exist anymore. The official Ladybird site has a link for it, so it's not a case of me mistyping the address.

Has anyone else used this site recently, or by any chance copied the information it contained? I'd considered doing that, to make it easier for myself, but didn't think I ought to for copyright reasons. Now I wish I had, as I don't have a complete list of all the Ladybird books. Also, it had some great items about re-prints which had verses altered, and now I don't know which ones to look out for.

Although appearing on Google, on activating it seems to no longer exist.

After watching The Ladybird Story (again) on BBC 4, I spent a spare £2.20 I had on my Paypal account to buy "What to Look For In Autumn" (buff cover, 1960, good condition). What an excellent little book! Lovely illustrations of farmland, countryside, birds and small, wild animals. Lots of informative text (given the size of the book). If you haven't seen the "What to Look For" series I would thoroughly recommend them.

I have a couple of the 'what to look for' books, and agree they are very good, but then I think ALL Ladybird books are good.

At the moment I'm keeping an eye out for 4b in the 'Peter and Jane' series. I thought I'd found one yesterday in a charity shop, but they wanted £4.50 for it, and it had a great big sticker on the front cover, which I wasn't sure would come off without damaging the book, so I put it back on the shelf. I know it was for charity, but talk about making a massive profit, I've picked Ladybird books up for 50p in other charity shops. They had other 'collectable' books on that shelf, all over priced in my opinion.