I just love vintage Ladybird Books!!

They are an extra special treat when they arrive by post at breakfast time!

The reading scheme books contain some of my favourite artwork. Reproductions of the pictures are available now but nothing beats original books. I have a wide range of vintage Ladybird available in the shop as well as a 'behind the scenes' store for topping up stock. I also run a 'finder's book' and try to track down favourites for customers. However, I generally avoid the expensive, rare, collectable ones simply because it will do This'n'That's reputation a power of no good to have those high prices attached to our books ... hope you see what I mean:)

There's similarly, simple, nostalgic artwork in the Learning With Mother series which, I am happy to say, are still favourites with young Mums who visit the shop. I always try to keep a wider spot amidst the clutter for buggy parking to give Mum a few free minutes to browse.

Interesting to see the 1969 advice to teachers in "Teaching Reading" with key words, guidance on teaching phonics, the use of big pictures and sentence cards ....... need I say more?

Somewhere, tucked away, I have a copy of the reader which I was taught with in the 1950's and what do you know!!...... even that had similar advice ......

Is this the start of a soapbox rant I hear you say ... could be but I will resist. Suffice to say that I retired from thirty four years of teaching a few years back and opened the shop.

An interesting twist! Children's stories were far less protective in the heyday of the Ladybird books. Here, at the end of "The Sly Fox and The Little Red Hen" the fox and his mother were killed by being scalded to death with boiling water. Not very fluffy as tales for the young go but were little lives blighted? I think not!

PS Watch this blog for information/pics. re Ladybird tins, pencil/make-up cases, notebooks, coasters, mugs, trays .....all of which are sold in This'n'That.