The first books I ever remember collecting were the Ladybird Well-loved Tales series. I saw them for the first time when I started Infants school and immediately fell in love with them. I also found that if you were very good in school then you could be chosen to sit outside the classroom of an afternoon and read them. I immediately became one of the best behaved children in the class just to get a chance to sit in the corridor to read and reread those lovely books.
I could tell you the tale of Chicken Licken, The Gingerbread Boy and The Three Billy Goats Gruff by heart pretty soon . I obviously must have pestered my Mum because she began to take me to Woolworths on the last Friday of each month to buy a new Ladybird book.
The first two I remember buying were Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. I read them over and over and oh how I wanted to have the witch's vegetable garden - minus the witch of course. My lovely Mum would take me for my next book come rain or shine, even after the horror of Rumplestiltskin. The drawing of that character gave me nightmares and I still get edgy when I open that book now. I hid it at the bottom of my toy box and it didn't come out again until I was a big, brave girl of seven. he still made me uneasy but by then I was a completionist and had to read them all through in order, afraid or not.
My favourite of all the Ladybird books were Cinderella and The Princess and the Pea. They had more magic for me than all the other books put together. Of course I thought the blue dress Cinderella wore to the second ball was the best and her wedding dress was so boring - white, why have white for weddings? I wanted colour and bows. (In case you're wondering my views changed as I grew up and I married in ivory, no bows).
I would read those two books over and over in bed at night, sometimes by my sister's torchlight because I should have been asleep. Nothing would keep me from my beloved Ladybird books.
When I moved across the road to Junior school, oh joy of joys, there were more Ladybird books to discover. Mrs Brown my lovely teacher had a selection of them on her nature table. I found that if you offered to tidy at playtime you got to stay and read the Ladybird nature books when you were done. I tidied as often as I could just to get to those books. Woolworths didn't have them and in those days we didn't have a bookshop in our village.
I moved into second year Juniors and my class was back in the Infants dining room. I had a teacher who wasn't very kind and it was the worst year of my time in primary school. But she did have a whole bookcase filled with Ladybird History books - yes there were more of them. I learned so much history that year from those ladybird books. In a period of respite from the not too nice teacher we had a student who on realising how I devoured the Ladybird books introduced me to the science section and even more nature books. She might as well have given me the Crown Jewels.
It was at this time that I found out about Pierre and Marie Curie and radium and would come home telling my parents all about their wonderful discoveries. I didn't talk much about what I did at school but I did talk a lot about all that I had learned from Ladybird books in quiet time.
As I moved into third year Juniors I decided that I was too big for these books and they were all given away to a friend of my mothers who had a younger child. That is something I regretted when my daughter was born and I wanted to introduce her to the delights of Well Loved Tales. To my horror, when I got to the bookshop, I found that they had been updated and no longer had the beautiful oil painting pictures I loved and remembered. I did manage to build up a collection of them eventually with trips to Hay on Wye and many second hand shops, all apart from Cinderella which I couldn't track down anywhere so my daughter missed that delight as a child. A few years ago Ladybird brought out a special edition and I saw it in Waterstones and completed my set.
Every so often one of the Ladybird books I adored comes to mind and the family has to listen to me going on about how wonderful it was.
That is how I came to have a collection of the Seasons books again. After hearing me sing their praises over and over, my lovely husband tracked them down and bought them for me. I still get them out as each season changes and read them over again because once you have loved Ladybird books you always love Ladybird books. I still collect them and I still get excited when I find one I remember from my childhood. I think it was Ladybird that made me a reader.
