The Ladybird celebrates a centenary
This year marks the centenary of Ladybird books, or at least of the use of its logo.
I don’t remember ever owning any of the books, but I certainly read some of them as all my friends and relatives seemed to be stocked up. They were scattered on playroom floors, lined up on shelves and piled on tables. I didn’t realise until I read about the centenary how familiar they were to me (and still are – my nephews and nieces have several).
In my mind’s eye I see the classic format – small book, few pages, lots of colour. I was interested to read that this isn’t their only style. They’ve moved with the times in print and digital.
I love success stories and Ladybird’s is a great one. How many millions of children have been introduced to the joys of reading and understanding the world by their books?
There’s something comforting about things that were familiar in childhood still being around and in general use, as opposed to locked up in a museum or antique shop. I hope the ghosts of those of us who are remembering them with pleasure now will get a glow of satisfaction at the bi-centenary.
Pictures from goodreads.
e a m harris 
Centenary year
I did a quick google on ‘centenary’ to see if any literary people of note came up. First time around almost everything was past its sell-by – mostly to do with last year, but some older than that.
I feel a rant coming on!
Nuff said. I tried again with 2014 in the search box.
This time I got a huge number of hits for the start of the First World War. One of them even had ‘celebrations’ in its title. Ugh! Who celebrates war?
It looks as if any other person or thing with a centenary this year is going to have to work hard to get noticed in all the war stuff. One I know about is Dylan Thomas, but I’ll be blogging about him in a later post when I’ve done enough research to sort of do him justice.
Among all the war hits there were a couple of golf ones: Hockley Golf Club and The British Golf Collectors Society. So I went in search of golf poetry. There’s quite a bit of it but most is definitely unserious.
One Gabe Anderson wrote this little gem which is one of the best summaries I’ve seen of anything:
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