Time for a spot of science on this week's Ladybird Tuesday. We've covered Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries from the Junior Science series (621) before on here, but now it's the turn of Light, Mirrors and Lenses.
This book covered everything from why we need some amount of light to be able to see, and how the human eye works right through to how light travels from stars so that we can see them here on earth. There are experiments for children to carry out including simply playing with shadows and making your own microscope using two convex mirrors and a ruler.
This book was originally published in 1962 and the illustrations are all very much of that time and several of them would make lovely decorations for a child's room. Before children had access to television channels and the internet doing experiments like these would have been the way for children to learn about science and try it out for themselves.
Looking through the experiments it's interesting to see that I can actually remember doing several of them either at school or at home with my Dad. I can even remember the science behind some of them!
The original Junior Science series contained four titles – Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries, Light, Mirrors and Lenses, Air, Wind and Flight and Levers, Pulleys and Engines – and they were published in the early 1960s. In the early 1980s the series was reissued and now there were five titles – Magnets and Electricity, Light, Air, Simple Mechanics and Simple Chemistry. The style of these newer books is very different and instead of the classic 1960s illustrations there were a mix of photographs, picture illustrations and diagrams showing how to do the experiments. I'm currently on the look out for both old and new versions of books in series 621 to hopefully be able to do some direct comparisons in a future Ladybird Tuesday post.
If you have a collection of old Ladybird books then please feel free to join in with Ladybird Tuesday. There are no formal rules to follow, just leave a link to any post you write in the comments below and if you're feeling kind link back to my Ladybird Tuesday category here on Being Mrs C. Thanks!
I think that we had this one when I was little, I have a memory of the shadow puppet page! It amazes me how detailed the Ladybird books are even though aimed at young children, I think it’s fantastic that they don’t try to simplify everything. I’ve joined in this week with Going to School http://www.jenniferslittleworld.com/2013/09/ladybird-tuesday-going-to-school.html
I really like the Junior Science series my non-fiction Ladybird books are skewed much more to the natural history series. This one looks amazing – I’ve never seen it before but would love a copy for my collection.
Its funny Ive often thought all the Ladybird books as a whole are skewed towards Natural History, yet when you actually look at a complete list theres actually much more balance. The science series is fantastic though – I just need to find all of them!