A Ladybird Fourth Picture Book, Series 704, 1971 (lam)

The 5 Picture Books, series 704, is one of the more nostalgic and evocative of series of Ladybird books.  I’ve always maintained that classic Ladybird books, whether they were writing about how the hovercraft works or teaching a baby to count, were essentially picture books.  The picture on the right-hand side of the page had to do most of the heavy lifting, to draw the reader in to the content of the text on the left.  Obviously, in this series the artwork really is the star of the show – the text just consists of a word or two.  But boy does artist Harry Wingfield rise to the challenge!  These illustrations surely represent some of his finest work.  All the domestic, everyday (in 1970s) objects depicted are stunning.  Harry just just paint an egg-cup, he paints the most enchanting, desirable, friendly egg-cup in the history of the world.  No photograph could ever come close.

What’s more, wife Ethel Wingfield was the brains behind this series – conceiving the layout and choice of objects. So it really is an E & H Wingfield tour-de-force.

This copy

It’s hard to find copies of these books that have not been loved-to-death by their very young readers.  This glossy (laminated) copy in good condition.  These books had a cover re-vamp around the early 1980s to ensure they all had cute, fluffy covers.  This book has the 1980s cover design but inside is the original format book. The book is in only fair to good condition inside and out – well used, small knocks, dents and rumples, marks to the front endapapers but clean and sound.  This copy dates to the 1980s and has the original price of 85p on the back.