Resources for Ladybird lovers
This is a short blog post for people who love the real Ladybird books and their covers. Or anyone who wonders where I get the images I use to make my spoof versions.
There are two websites and two Twitter accounts where I sourced most of the images I collage together to make my spoof covers. (Yes, they do start mostly start off as artwork from actual Ladybird books). Sometimes I just put a new title on them, other times it takes a lot of mashing things together - for example 'Digging for Brexit' takes the turnip field from 'The Very Big Turnip', and the old couple from (I think) 'How It Works: The Grandparent'.
Anyway, those resources for you.
Websites:
Nicole's website for collectors
This website is very comprehensive! It has a list of over 4,000 Ladybird titles sorted by series, and over 3,000 scanned pictures of their front covers. It even includes foreign language Ladybird titles, from Afrikaans to Zulu. The design is a bit dated, but who cares when there is so much content?
The Arran Alexander Collection
An informative site for collectors of vintage Ladybird books. It's aimed at selling you actual physical books (unsurprisingly, since the site is for a used bookstore in Laurencekirk, Scotland), but it still has loads of images of the books and their covers.
Ladybird Fly Away Home
Another website that's interesting if you love these books is Ladybird Fly Away Home. It's another collectors' site dedicated to old Ladybird books. This one was less use for me in my hunt for images, but there are certainly a lot of interesting articles.
Other sites
Other useful websites for background info include the Wikipedia page for Ladybird Books and the official UK website for Ladybird books (now an imprint of Penguin Books).
Twitter accounts:
Helen Day
Helen Day's Twitter feed is full of photos of history, quirky stuff, nostalgia and nature through the medium of images from old Ladybird Books.
It's very good. I even followed this one before I ever had the idea of making spoof covers of my own.
Vintage Ladybird
A Twitter account for all lovers and collectors of Ladybird Books. Lots of tweets of front covers and interior illustrations.
There's even a Ladybird Books Facebook group. I haven't investigated much, but it's definitely out there.
If you know of any more good resources on Ladybird books, especially ones with good images, feel free to drop me a line.
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