Chapter 3
The 1964 book continued to be the epitome of Ladybird’s Cinderella until the 1970s. Winter’s illustrations and Southgate’s storytelling proved to be such a success within Ladybird that it became one of the most famous Ladybird books in existence. The 1970s saw the publishing house enter a new era of change. Amongst the changes in pricing the books, the company also brought on a new parent company the Pearson Longman Group. In Ladybird By Design, Lawrence Zeegan states “On 3 January Wills & Hepworth and the Ladybird imprint became the property of the Pearson Longman Group… In September of that year, Wills & Hepworth officially changed their name to Ladybird Books. (Zeegan, 2015, p. 226). This new direction saw Ladybird re-release …show more content…
An interior illustration was placed underneath and the “Ladybird Reading Level” beside the title. These covers, in my opinion, are an amazing example of contemporary design that really brought the company into a new direction, especially seeing as how this was all created traditionally as computer design was not yet developed.
The Read it Yourself Cinderella book was illustrated by Brian Price Thomas and written by Fran Hunia. Little is known about both Price Thomas and Hunia apart from their Ladybird titles. Hunia was responsible for the majority of the Read it Yourself titles and Price Thomas appears to have worked with Ladybird all throughout the 1970s and early 80s. Hunia’s role was to compact Vera Southgate’s text into very simple sentences; For example, an excerpt drawn from series 8 reads “Here are Cinderella’s sisters. They are happy. They are going to the ball.” This simple and concise method of storytelling was perfect for a much younger audience to read to themselves. However this had it’s set backs. The Cinderella concept was lost amidst the simplicity. These books were meant as a starting point for children’s reading and then for them to progress to the …show more content…
Her gown was much more faithfully adapted when Ladybird decided to re-release their Well-loved Tales series for the modern audience (fig. 17). I have known of both the 1974 Read it Yourself and this book, published in 1982, since I was a child but I did not realise they were both illustrated by Brian Price Thomas. Perhaps this was due to the children who read the Read it Yourself growing older and that Ladybird felt they needed to go re-release their Well-Loved Tales for a contemporary audience. These two books not only have different structures but the illustrations are far from alike. The illustrative style is also completely different in the 1964 Well-Loved Tales edition. In this series, Vera Southgate edited her original texts to fit the modern children of the time. Very little changed in regards to formula or structure but sentences such as “Once Upon a Time there was a little girl” was edited to “Once Upon a Time there was a young girl” (Southgate, Well-Loved Tales Cinderella, 1964 p. 4 and Southgate, Well-Loved Tales Cinderella, 1982 p. 4). The original 1964 edition and this 1982 version are very alike generally. Each page of text is accompanied with the same type of illustration (figs. 18 and 19). Here we see a clearly re-illustrated depiction of Cinderella crying, which I mentioned in the previous chapter. Instead of it being heavily influenced by pop culture of the
The 1964 book continued to be the epitome of Ladybird’s Cinderella until the 1970s. Winter’s illustrations and Southgate’s storytelling proved to be such a success within Ladybird that it became one of the most famous Ladybird books in existence. The 1970s saw the publishing house enter a new era of change. Amongst the changes in pricing the books, the company also brought on a new parent company the Pearson Longman Group. In Ladybird By Design, Lawrence Zeegan states “On 3 January Wills & Hepworth and the Ladybird imprint became the property of the Pearson Longman Group… In September of that year, Wills & Hepworth officially changed their name to Ladybird Books. (Zeegan, 2015, p. 226). This new direction saw Ladybird re-release …show more content…
An interior illustration was placed underneath and the “Ladybird Reading Level” beside the title. These covers, in my opinion, are an amazing example of contemporary design that really brought the company into a new direction, especially seeing as how this was all created traditionally as computer design was not yet developed.
The Read it Yourself Cinderella book was illustrated by Brian Price Thomas and written by Fran Hunia. Little is known about both Price Thomas and Hunia apart from their Ladybird titles. Hunia was responsible for the majority of the Read it Yourself titles and Price Thomas appears to have worked with Ladybird all throughout the 1970s and early 80s. Hunia’s role was to compact Vera Southgate’s text into very simple sentences; For example, an excerpt drawn from series 8 reads “Here are Cinderella’s sisters. They are happy. They are going to the ball.” This simple and concise method of storytelling was perfect for a much younger audience to read to themselves. However this had it’s set backs. The Cinderella concept was lost amidst the simplicity. These books were meant as a starting point for children’s reading and then for them to progress to the …show more content…
Her gown was much more faithfully adapted when Ladybird decided to re-release their Well-loved Tales series for the modern audience (fig. 17). I have known of both the 1974 Read it Yourself and this book, published in 1982, since I was a child but I did not realise they were both illustrated by Brian Price Thomas. Perhaps this was due to the children who read the Read it Yourself growing older and that Ladybird felt they needed to go re-release their Well-Loved Tales for a contemporary audience. These two books not only have different structures but the illustrations are far from alike. The illustrative style is also completely different in the 1964 Well-Loved Tales edition. In this series, Vera Southgate edited her original texts to fit the modern children of the time. Very little changed in regards to formula or structure but sentences such as “Once Upon a Time there was a little girl” was edited to “Once Upon a Time there was a young girl” (Southgate, Well-Loved Tales Cinderella, 1964 p. 4 and Southgate, Well-Loved Tales Cinderella, 1982 p. 4). The original 1964 edition and this 1982 version are very alike generally. Each page of text is accompanied with the same type of illustration (figs. 18 and 19). Here we see a clearly re-illustrated depiction of Cinderella crying, which I mentioned in the previous chapter. Instead of it being heavily influenced by pop culture of the