The Key Words Reading Scheme is a series of 36

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children's books A child ( : children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younge ...

, published by the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

publishing company,

Ladybird Books 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. It is an imprint of Penguin Random House, a subsidiary of ...

. The series are also often referred to as Peter and Jane, the names of the main characters.

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 A Borstal was a type of youth detention centre in the United Kingdom, several member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland. In India, such a detention centre is known as a Borstal school. Borstals were ...

and later

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of a "school for the

educationally subnormal Educationally subnormal was a term used historically in the United Kingdom to refer to children with very limited intellectual abilities. Throughout much of the 20th century, British education policy focused on separating these children from the ...

" in Cheltenham. From research undertaken in the 1950s by Murray with Professor Joe McNally, an

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at the

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, Murray realised that only 12 words account for a quarter of the vocabulary used in normal speaking, reading and writing in the

, 100 words for half, and 300 words for three-quarters. Starting with book 1a, a budding reader of

primary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

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 A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or ...

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 John Henry "Harry" Wingfield (4 December 1910 – 5 March 2002) was an English illustrator, best known for his drawings that illustrated the Ladybird Books Key Words Reading Scheme (also known as '' Peter and Jane'') in the 1960s through to the ...

, Martin Aitchison,

Frank Hampson Frank Hampson (21 December 1918 – 8 July 1985) was a British illustrator. He is best known as the creator and artist of Dan Dare and other characters in the boys' comic, the ''Eagle'', to which he contributed from 1950 to 1961. Biograp ...

, 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 In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called " serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than s ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands ...

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,

golliwog The golliwog, also spelled golliwogg or shortened to golly, is a doll-like character – created by cartoonist and author Florence Kate Upton – that appeared in children's books in the late 19th century, usually depicted as a type of rag ...

s 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.

List of books

# 1a: Play with us # 1b: Look at this # 1c: Read and write # 2a: We have fun # 2b: Have a go # 2c: I like to write # 3a: Things we like # 3b: Boys and girls # 3c: Let me write # 4a: Things we do # 4b: Fun at the farm # 4c: Say the sound # 5a: Where we go # 5b: Out in the sun # 5c: More sounds to say # 6a: Our friends # 6b: We like to help # 6c: Reading with sounds # 7a: Happy holiday # 7b: Fun and games # 7c: Easy to sound # 8a: Sunny days # 8b: The big house # 8c: Fun with sounds # 9a: Games we like # 9b: Jump from the sky # 9c: Enjoying reading # 10a: Adventure on the island # 10b: Adventure at the castle # 10c: Learning is fun # 11a: Mystery on the island # 11b: The carnival # 11c: Books are exciting # 12a: The holiday camp mystery # 12b: Mountain adventure # 12c: The open door to reading

Updates

Few changes have been made to the books since the 1970s, and they may be considered a source of

social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

. The books make use of the whole word or "look and say" technique which is generally considered outmoded as a method of

reading education Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling) ...

when not used in conjunction with

phonics Phonics is a method for teaching people how to read and write an alphabetic language (such as English, Arabic or Russian). It is done by demonstrating the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters or gro ...

. Nevertheless, the books remain on sale in 2013, priced relatively cheaply at around £2.99 per book.

Worldwide sales

In some Asian countries, particularly those which are also part of the British Commonwealth, the books are still widely used as a teaching aid in nurseries, preschools and kindergartens.

References and external links

See all the KEY WORDS READING SCHEME booksRead about the original JANE from the Key Words books
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...