Happy new year vintage Ladybird lovers! Now, before we get on to this week's book I have to tell you about my television highlight of Christmas - the BBC Four Timeshift programme all about vintage Ladybird books. It was quite simply fantastic - even if my mum and husband both fell asleep watching it! If you missed it then luckily there are some clips available on their website here. They're definitely worth a watch. The programme made me realise just how small my collection is compared to what is out there somewhere. It was also fantastic for learning a bit more about the history ... read more

This is one of those Ladybird books which I remember so vividly from my own childhood. It's a little bit different rom the rest of the nature series (536) in that it covers the human body in detail rather than other bits of nature. Even as an adult reader, this book provides and excellent overview of the human body and its main functions and features. The diagrams also remind me of ones that I had to draw into my school GCSE biology notebook, especially the one of the digestive system. I'm not sure if the same illustrations were used in my school text books or if I'm just ... read more

The Ladybird Tuesday post on The Story of Newspapers can now be found over on Penny Reads. You can read it in full here. 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! ... read more

I've blogged before about my love of Ladybird series 621 (Junior Science) and Ladybird Tuesday has already featured Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries and Light, Mirrors and Lenses from that series. I'm on a mission to try and collect the whole series, both the originals and the updated versions from the 1980s, and I was therefore delighted when my sister picked me up a copy of Levers, Pulleys and Engines. This book is a perfect introduction to so many aspects of physics and tries to align them with things that are familiar to children. There are also some lovely little ... read more

I was delighted to be given a couple of fantastic additions to my Ladybird Collection by my sister last week. One from the Junior Science series which I will be featuring soon and also a rather exciting copy of A Second Ladybird Key Words Picture Dictionary and Spelling Book. Now Mrs Fox's featured a 1966 version of this back in March, but it's fascinating to see how different a later edition looks.  This version was published in 1980 and the illustrations really do have that late 70s / early 80s look about them - especially with the purple cover. It seems that the written ... read more

As regular readers will know I do love a bit of tradition. I went to a very traditional school as a child and firmly remember having to do lots of handwriting and grammar exercises in English class and I think that's why the Ladybird book of Handwriting appeals to me so much. The book starts off with explaining how the pen (or pencil) should ideally be held and then introduces a series of preliminary exercises to help children gain confident control over their "writing instrument" in preparation for actually forming letters with it. It then launches into letters - grouped as ... read more

So let's just pretend it's still Tuesday OK? This week's run away a little bit! Things we like, book 3a from the Ladybird Key Words Reading Scheme is a such a reminder of my own childhood as these covers are exactly the ones I remember when I was young. I love the artwork and the innocent time that it represents. Things have changed quite a bit since 1964 when this book was first published and I find it fascinating to look at all the day to day things that children did then and I think they're a great reminder of how children are still entertained by simple things. Little ... read more

I'm turning to a series that we've not featured before here on Ladybird Tuesday for this week's entry. Series 622, Books for Toddlers is a set of seven books which was created because Ladybird realised just how popular their Early Learning books were for both children and parents. I'm yet to find an original copy of the first book in the series, The Ladybird a-b-c, and from what I've read it may be hard to find one. It's one of their most popular books though and has been reprinted and reissued many times. The rest of the series is six books (imaginatively titled Book 1 ... read more

We're embracing the 1970s on this week's Ladybird Tuesday. Bedtime Rhymes was published in 1977 and even the illustrations in the inside cover and really take you back to the era of flares and platform shoes. The book is a collection of rhymes and poems, some of which have a bedtime or night theme to them, and others which just don't at all! Rather than the standard nursery rhymes you instead get a mix of well known poems from the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and others where I've not heard of either the poem or poet before. One of my favourite poems of all time is also ... read more

A bit of a change on Ladybird Tuesday this week as rather than focus on a single book, I'm actually featuring a couple of books from series 740 (Classics) which are both from the Tales of King Arthur sub-series. I recently came across The Deeds of the Nameless Knight and The Knight of the Golden Falcon and other stories in a charity shop and to be honest I'd not seen these books at all before and wasn't really sure how they fit in with the Ladybird series. Written by Desmond Dunkerley, who was also responsible for other books in series 740 about Robin Hood, the King Arthur ... read more