Ladybird Books are a
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
-based
publishing
Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...
company, trading as a stand-alone imprint within the
Penguin Group
Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media company, media Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a Mergers and acquisitions, mer ...
of companies. The Ladybird imprint publishes mass-market
children's books
A child () is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking countries, the legal definition of ''chi ...
.
It is an imprint of
Penguin Random House
Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was or ...
, a subsidiary of German media conglomerate
Bertelsmann
The Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, commonly known as Bertelsmann (), is a German privately held company, private multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, ...
.
History
The company traces its origins to 1867, when Henry Wills opened a bookshop in Loughborough, Leicestershire. Within a decade he progressed to printing and publishing
guidebooks and
street directories. He was joined by William Hepworth in 1904, and the company traded as Wills & Hepworth.
By August 1914, Wills & Hepworth had published their first children's books, under the Ladybird imprint. From the beginning, the company was identified by a
ladybird logo
A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name that it represents, as in ...
, at first with open wings, but eventually changed to the more familiar closed-wing ladybird in the late 1950s. The ladybird logo has since undergone several redesigns, the latest of which was launched in 2006.
Wills & Hepworth began trading as Ladybird Books in 1971 as a direct result of the brand recognition that their imprint had achieved in Britain. In the 1960s and 1970s the company's
Key Words Reading Scheme (launched in 1964) was heavily used by British
primary school
A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...
s, using a reduced vocabulary to help children learn to read. This series of 36 small-format hardback books presented
stereotype
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalization, generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can ...
d models of British family life: the innocence of
Peter and Jane at play, Mum the
housewife, and Dad the
breadwinner. Many of the illustrations in this series were by
Harry Wingfield,
John Berry,
Martin Aitchison,
Frank Hampson and
Charles Tunnicliffe.
In the 1960s, Ladybird produced the Learnabout series of non-fiction (informational) books, some of which were used by adults as well as children.
An independent company for much of its life, Ladybird Books became part of the
Pearson Group in 1972. However, falling demand in the late 1990s led Pearson to fully merge Ladybird into its
Penguin Books
Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the ...
subsidiary in 1998, joining other established names in British children's books such as
Puffin Books
Puffin Books is a longstanding children's imprint of the British publishers Penguin Books. Since the 1960s, it has been among the largest publishers of children's books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world. The imprint now belongs to ...
,
Dorling Kindersley
Dorling Kindersley Limited (branded as DK) is a British multinational publishing company specialising in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 63 languages.
It is part of Penguin Random House, a subsidiary of German media cong ...
and
Frederick Warne. The Ladybird offices and printing factory in Loughborough closed the same year, and much of the company's archive of historic artwork was transferred to public collections.
In November 2014, Ladybird signed up to the
Let Books Be Books campaign and announced that it was "committed" to avoiding labelling books as "for girls" or "for boys" and would be removing such gender labelling in reprinted copies. The publisher added: "Out of literally hundreds of titles currently in print, we actually only have six titles with this kind of titling". Its parent company, Penguin Random House Children's division, would also be following suit.
Imprints of Ladybird Books included Balloon, Paperbird, Sunbird, and Disney.
Adults and parodies
In October 2015, it was announced that Ladybird books would be publishing its first series of books for adults. The eight books, which parody the style and artwork of the company’s books for children, include the titles ''The Hangover'', ''Mindfulness'', ''Dating'' and ''The Hipster'', and were written by television comedy writers
Jason Hazeley and
Joel Morris. They were published on 18 November 2015.
The series follows a trend of other spoof Ladybird books including ''We Go to the Gallery'' by
Miriam Elia who had previously been threatened with legal action by Penguin.
On 5 July 2016, Touchstone Books, an
imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced that they would publish American adaptations of the Ladybird Books for Grown-ups, called The Fireside Grown-Up Guides.
Ladybird Expert (Series 117) was launched in January 2017 following the success of Ladybird for Grown-Ups. The books in this series are not parodies, but instead use the classic format to serve as clear introductions to a wide variety of subjects, generally in the fields of science and history.
The first book published and the inspiration for the series is ''Climate Change'' by
the Prince of Wales,
Tony Juniper and
Emily Shuckburgh.
Four more titles were released in 2017 by
Jim Al-Khalili (''Quantum Mechanics''),
Steve Jones (''Evolution''),
James Holland (''The Battle of Britain'') and
Ben Saunders (''Shackleton'').
The line was expanded with fifteen further books in 2018 and more titles were published in 2019.
The classic Ladybird book
The pocket-sized hardback Ladybird measured roughly four-and-a-half by seven inches (11.5 cm by 18 cm). Early books used a standard 56-page format, chosen because a complete book could be printed on one large standard sheet of paper, a quad crown, 40
inch
The inch (symbol: in or prime (symbol), ) is a Units of measurement, unit of length in the imperial units, British Imperial and the United States customary units, United States customary System of measurement, systems of measurement. It is eq ...
es by 30 inches,
[ which was then folded and cut to size without waste paper. It was an economical way of producing books, enabling the books to be retailed at a low price which, for almost thirty years, remained at two ]shilling
The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currency, currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 1 ...
s and sixpence (12.5p).
The first book in the line, ''Bunnikin's Picnic Party: a story in verse for children with illustrations in colour'', was produced in 1940. The book featured stories in verse written by W. Perring, accompanied by full-colour illustrations by A. J. (Angusine Jeanne) MacGregor. The appeal of Bunnikin, Downy Duckling and other animal characters made the book an instant success. Later series included nature books (series 536, some illustrated by, for example, Charles Tunnicliffe and Allen W. Seaby) and a host of non-fiction books, including hobbies and interests, history ( L du Garde Peach wrote very many of these) and travel.
Ladybird began publishing books in other formats in 1980. Most of the remaining titles in the classic format were withdrawn in 1999 when their printing facility in Loughborough closed.
References
Further reading
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External links
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* Collectors' site dedicated to old Ladybird books
* Collectors' site featuring over 3000 images of Ladybird cover art
* Collectors' site
* Vintage Ladybird Book Collectors' Information site
* Ladybird Book Collectors' and discussion site
* A guide to Ladybird Books
*
{{Authority control
Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom
British children's literature
Companies based in Loughborough
Early childhood education in the United Kingdom
Publishing companies established in 1867
1972 mergers and acquisitions
1998 mergers and acquisitions
Penguin Random House