History
The first book in the series, Ladybird series 641, was published in 1964, and the series was completed by the first publication of the 36th book in 1967. Over 80 million books in the series have been sold worldwide, and the books remain in print in 2012.
The books were designed as materials for teaching a small child to learn to read, using a system of key phrases and words devised by teacher William Murray. Murray was an educational adviser at a borstal and later headmaster of a "school for the educationally subnormal" in Cheltenham. From research undertaken in the 1950s by Murray with Professor Joe McNally, an educational psychologist at the University of Manchester, Murray realised that only 12 words account for a quarter of the vocabulary used in normal speaking, reading and writing in the English language, 100 words for half, and 300 words for three-quarters.
Starting with book 1a, a budding reader of primary school age, from 3 to 5 years old, is introduced to brother and sister Peter and Jane, their dog Pat, their Mummy and Daddy, and their home, toys, playground, the beach, shops, buses and trains, and so on. The first book uses the 12 key words which are used repeatedly ("Here is Peter", "Peter is here", "Here is Jane", "Jane is here", "I like Peter", "I like Jane"). Additional words are introduced gradually, page by page, to expand the reader's reading vocabulary, with the new words on each page set out in a footnote. The reader can consolidate their learning with books 1b, or practise writing in book 1c, all with the same vocabulary; or progress to book 2a (and 2b and 2c), and so on, with 12 sets of three books in all.
Two more characters, Simon and John, were introduced further into the series, as the books developed in length and detail to become targeted at growing children who had developed further reading skills. These two characters are cousins of Peter and Jane.
Illustrations
All of the books are small, thin hardback volumes with 56 pages, measuring 112×170 mm (4½" × 6¾"). Each book has text on a left page and an illustration on the facing right page, drawn by artists Harry Wingfield, Martin Aitchison, Frank Hampson, Robert Ayton and John Berry. The illustrations vary in style from book to book, depending on artist, but Peter and Jane are recognisable throughout. The clear sans serif typeface used in the books starts at a large size and gradually becomes smaller as the reader progresses through the series. The sentence structure also becomes gradually more complex.
The books were first published in 1964, with a firmly 1950s feel to the illustrations provided by the furniture and clothing depicted, and the social context reflecting the life of a white, middle-class family. The books were revised and updated in 1970, and again in the late 1970s, to reflect changes in fashions and in social attitudes. For example, golliwogs were airbrushed out; Daddy takes a more active domestic role; and Jane moved out of skirts and dresses into jeans, and abandoned her dolly for rollerskates. However, Peter still goes out to help Daddy, or actively plays with a ball, while Jane stays indoors to help Mummy, passively watches Peter, or plays with her doll.
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images. The images in picture books can be produced in a range of media, such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor, and pencil. Picture books often serve as pedagogical resources, aiding with children's language development or understanding of the world.
Between the Lions is an American animated/live-action/puppet children's preschool television series designed to promote reading. The show was a co-production between WGBH in Boston and Sirius Thinking, Ltd., in New York City, in association with Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the distributor from seasons 1–10, in Mississippi. The show won nine Daytime Emmy awards between 2001 and 2007. Although it was created by alumni of the fellow PBS children’s show Sesame Street, Between the Lions was not created by Sesame Workshop, nor was it produced with their involvement in any way. The show ran from April 3, 2000 to November 22, 2010, taking over the schedule slot held by The Puzzle Place upon its debut.
Dick and Jane are the two main characters created by Zerna Sharp for a series of basal readers written by William S. Gray to teach children to read. The characters first appeared in the Elson-Gray Readers in 1930 and continued in a subsequent series of books through the final version in 1965. These readers were used in classrooms in the United States and in other English-speaking countries for nearly four decades, reaching the height of their popularity in the 1950s, when 80 percent of first-grade students in the United States used them. Although the Dick and Jane series of primers continued to be sold until 1973 and remained in use in some classrooms throughout the 1970s, they were replaced with other reading texts by the 1980s and gradually disappeared from school curricula.
Ladybird Books is a London-based publishing company, trading as a stand-alone imprint within the Penguin Group of companies. The Ladybird imprint publishes mass-market children's books.
Zerna Addas Sharp was an American educator and book editor who is best known as the creator of the Dick and Jane series of beginning readers for elementary school-aged children. Published by Scott, Foresman and Company of Chicago, Illinois, the readers, which described the activities of her fictional siblings, "Dick," "Jane," "Sally," and other characters, were widely used in schools in the United States and many other English-speaking countries for nearly forty years. The series, which included such titles as We Look and See, We Come and Go, We Work and Play, and Fun with Dick and Jane, among others, was marketed until 1973 and used the look-say method of teaching reading.
Basal readers are textbooks used to teach reading and associated skills to schoolchildren. Commonly called "reading books" or "readers" they are usually published as anthologies that combine previously published short stories, excerpts of longer narratives, and original works. A standard basal series comes with individual identical books for students, a Teacher's Edition of the book, and a collection of workbooks, assessments, and activities.
Reading comprehension is the ability to process written text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows. Reading comprehension relies on two abilities that are connected to each other: word reading and language comprehension. Comprehension specifically is a "creative, multifaceted process" dependent upon four language skills: phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Beginner Books is the Random House imprint for young children ages 3–9, co-founded by Phyllis Cerf with Ted Geisel, more often known as Dr. Seuss, and his wife Helen Palmer Geisel. Their first book was Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat (1957), whose title character appears in the brand's logo. Cerf compiled a list of 379 words as the basic vocabulary for young readers, along with another 20 slightly harder "emergency" words. No more than 200 words were taken from that list to write The Cat in the Hat. Subsequent books in the series were modeled on the same requirement.
Janet and John is a series of early reading books for children, originally published in the UK by James Nisbet and Co in four volumes in 1949–50, and one of the first to make use of the "look and say" approach. Further volumes appeared later, and the series became a sales success in the 1950s and 60s, both in the UK and in New Zealand. By the 1970s, the books were considered outdated, and several updated versions were issued. Facsimiles of two of the original volumes were reprinted in 2007 to cater for the nostalgia market.
John Henry "Harry" Wingfield was an English illustrator, best known for his drawings that illustrated the Ladybird Books Key Words Reading Scheme in the 1960s through to the 1980s, which sold over 80 million copies worldwide.
William S. Gray (1885–1960) was an American educator and literacy advocate.
High frequency sight words are commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole by sight, so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode. Sight words were introduced after whole language fell out of favor with the education establishment.
Interactive children's books are a subset of children's books that require participation and interaction by the reader. Participation can range from books with texture to those with special devices used to help teach children certain tools. Interactive children's books may also incorporate modern technology or be computerized books. Movable books, a subsection of interactive books, are defined as "covering pop-ups, transformations, tunnel books, volvelles, flaps, pull-tabs, pop-outs, pull-downs, and more, each of which performs in a different manner. Also included, because they employ the same techniques, are three-dimensional greeting cards."
A graded reader book is an "easy reading" book that supports the extensive reading approach to teaching English as a second or foreign language, and other languages. While many graded reader books are written for native speaker children, more often they are targeted at young adults and above, since children's books are already widely available and deal with topics not relevant to more mature language learners.
Emergent literacy is a term that is used to explain a child's knowledge of reading and writing skills before they learn how to read and write words. It signals a belief that, in literate society, young children—even one- and two-year-olds—are in the process of becoming literate. Through the support of parents, caregivers, and educators, a child can successfully progress from emergent to conventional reading.
Well Loved Tales was a series of illustrated re-tellings of fairy tales and other traditional stories published by Ladybird between 1964 and the early 1990s. The books were labelled as "easy reading" and were graded depending on such aspects as their length, complexity and vocabulary. Most of the stories in the series were based on stories by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, alongside a number of traditional English folk tales such as Jack and the Beanstalk and The Three Little Pigs. The first title in the series was Cinderella, and over the next decade, twenty seven titles were published, all written by Vera Southgate. In 1979, with the publication of The Ugly Duckling, Pinocchio and Tom Thumb in the series, the look and format of the books changed. The books now universally featured a green spine and back cover, as well as a standard logo. The series also broke with the Ladybird tradition of having a left page of just text and a right page of just picture, and the illustrations became more stylised than the previous editions. Older titles were gradually re-illustrated over the years. Under this new look, even more titles retold by a variety of different editors and authors came to be added over the course of the 1980s, with popular stories including Hansel and Gretel, The Little Mermaid and The Wizard of Oz.
William Murray was a British educationist who created the Ladybird Peter and Jane books.
The Ladybird Expert books is a series of titles for an adult readership intended to provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions, informed by expert opinion, to key subjects drawn from science, history and culture.
Steve Hawley is a British artist who has been working in video art and film since the 1980s. Hawley's work, characterised by 'a preoccupation with language and image', has been shown at video festivals and broadcast worldwide. He was Professor of Art and Media at the Manchester School of Art until 2017, when he became Professor Emeritus.
Vera Southgate was a British educationalist who dedicated herself to improving how children were taught to read English from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, a period when many different methods were practised, including the initial teaching alphabet, phonics, and whole language.
