The Wonderful World of Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups (Ladybirds for Grown-Ups)

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Of course some work meetings are vital and crucial for business, others are an utter waste of time. Elia created her own retro pictures, but Hazeley and Morris had the entire Ladybird archive to riffle through. The once cutting-edge illustrations had become a gift for pastiche. In The Ladybird Book of the Meeting – which has sold 165,000 copies – five middle-aged white men sit in earnest discussion around a table. The caption reads: “These important people are discussing work-place diversity.” The fun of the series lies in the relationship of mid-20th-century iconography aimed at children to 21st-century comedy for adults. Not to be outdone, they had Hazeley and Morris create a series of spoof Ladybird books just for Penguin. Depressing comedy THE PERFECT GIFT for anyone who spends Christmas Day counting the minutes until the Boxing Day sales start. In July 2014, together with her brother, Ezra, she produced a book called We Go to the Gallery, in which Peter and Jane were introduced by mummy to some of the masterpieces of 20th-century art.

Armitstead, Claire (22 September 2015). "The flyaway success of the Ladybird art prank". The Guardian . Retrieved 30 December 2015. While still fundamentally good-natured and good-humored, these little mini-observations and pronouncements, which are teamed up especially well with the vintage drawings, strike a chord more often than not. Because each and every word is chosen with care, and because timing and tone is superb, this is one volume that particularly lends itself to rereading. A very nice effort. Penguin’s publication of a set of satirical spoofs on its classic Ladybird books will no doubt attract a lot of attention from anyone who grew up with them in the 60s, 70s and 80s. With titles such as The Shed; The Wife; The Husband; and The Hipster, Penguin’s tongue-in-cheek “adult” Ladybirds should find a ready market among those who were given the originals as a way of teaching them to read.

The Climate Change book has a rather different purpose, to campaign for change in a politically treacherous area. “It is the result,” according to co-author Prince Charles, “of a conversation I had with a friend following my return from having spoken at the opening session of the Paris Climate Change Summit that took place in December 2015.” With a comic pomposity that could pass for a spoof itself, Climate Change not only has three authors but declares itself to have been peer-reviewed by eight learned meteorologists. And there were all these books all over the place from like... the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s that looked SUPER-Patriarchal. Like a bunch of Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery: When we’re young we wonder if we’ll be a surgeon or an astronaut. We can be anything we want to be. Then one day we can’t. 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.

Brexit gave us lots of exciting new words, like brextremist, remoaner, bremoaner, remaybe, breprehensible, remaintenance, brexorcist, remaidstone, brex-girlfriend, remange, brextortion, remayhem and bregret. This is short book that investigates the need for and execution of work-placed meetings in an easy to understand manner. The text is kept simple and lively whilst the messages it delivers hit home hard with laser-focused precision. The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. Featuring original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text.

Depressing comedy

All the humour in the Husband and Wife books is based on the sort of gently demeaning stereotypes - of men and women - that were common when the pictures were drawn, when mother-in-law jokes and Benny Hill were all the rage. Not so zeitgeisty now: what was once mainstream now feels easy but risky.

The Ladybird imprint began life in 1940 with Bunnikin’s Picnic Party, the first of a new series dreamed up by Loughborough-based printer turned publisher Wills & Hepworth, which had set itself up in 1915 as an outlet for “pure and healthy literature” for children. Between 1940 and 1980, it published 646 titles, in 63 series, on topics that ranged from British history to fairytales and how to make a transistor radio. Then there are examples of people making early morning arrangements to attend meetings [I once attended a so-called 'breakfast' meeting so I mischievously took in cereals and bowls] and then the meeting-speak is explored with all sorts of buzz words and phrases being used, many of which often were unknown to the participants but in my experience only rarely did anyone speak up and ask what things meant. Members of one meeting in the book delighted in using some of the new words and could not resist keep reusing such as 'upskilling'. So much so that another member of the said meeting commented, 'Jethro is really upcheesing me.'

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Except that the women in Sex And The City never stay in for two weeks watching old episodes of Sex And The City. The Ladybird Book of The Meeting, by J.A. Hazeley and J.P. Morris, is one in a series of Ladybird books for grown-ups written to help them cope with the world around them. My daughter gave it to my husband on Fathers’ Day and it is the only book he has successfully finished reading this year. This probably says something about shortening attention spans in our modern world, or maybe just about him. Penguin Random House will release nine new titles in itsLadybird Books for Grown-Ups series for this autumn, including How it Works: The Studentand The Ladybird Book of the Meeting. THE PERFECT GIFT for the party animal . . . or at the very least, for that person you know who doesn't know when it's time to go home.