Janet and John: Book One (Janet & John Series)

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If we look at the publishing industry it has been behind popular culture by a number of years. People have wanted retro." I'm now thinking of "investing" in a few sets of Oxford Reading Tree books. No doubt in 2050 they will be worth a mint as my own children's' generation are falling over themselves to recapture the adventures of Biff, Chip, Kipper and Floppy the dog. Does anyone else look out for the spectacles and dog's bone when they are reading these books with their kids, or is it just me?

It appeared the new books had tried to correct some of those problems. But the typography and some of the stories were difficult to follow. It seemed the only similarity with the old books were the names Janet and John. The books were used in New Zealand schools in the 1950s but were replaced in 1963 with the Government-sponsored "Ready to Read" series. There had always been plenty of advice to the poor — or rather to poor women — on how to manage their children and their households. (Much of this advice was delivered via compulsory schooling; indeed, Mother's quoted instructions to Pat about eschewing roast beef in favour of thrifty rabbit and soup bones may well be thinly disguised advice.) But never before had the I remember a great sense of achievement in moving from the Janet & John red book (number one I think) to the blue book, aged about six or seven at my primary school in north London. I was as fascinated with the typeface as with the illustrations; the beginning of a lifelong love of reading and creative writing. Interestingly though, my schooling was interrupted by a family move to Scotland for 18 months. When I returned to my primary school in the last year before going to secondary school, my reading and writing ability - according to the teachers - far exceeded those of my classmates. And I don't recall reading Janet & John books in Edinburgh. What we need is a return to a spiffing time when women knew they were weak and also knew their place, ie the kitchenMunro, Rona; Murray, Philippa (1973). Kathy and Mark Little Book - Orange I. James Nisbet and Co Ltd. ISBN 0-7202-1076-3. Because my Dad was in the services, we moved around a lot and the few books that my brother and I owned ended up being given away. I have since spent my adulthood hunting around second-hand bookshops and more lately the internet replacing these long lost friends - embraced with tears and great emotion.

This is what the inside of Tim’s head looks like. It also contains pictures of ladies before they have put their clothes on. It's nostalgia publishing. People remember it from the past with happy memories. They are probably going to be in their 40s, 50s, 60s. To see it again to relive those times. They were probably happier times. The political context was encouraging for reformers: 'we had the knowledge that the new Labour Government was pledged to social reform, and that its minister of education [ Peter Fraser], the second-ranking member of Cabinet, was one of us in the audience and applauding as enthusiastically as we were.' 5 jeers of 'brainbox!' and 'four-eyes!' accompanied with surreptitious thumps. (Any boy caught hitting a girl would have got the strap.) Male teachers did not seem overjoyed at my constantly raised hand either. At my all-girl secondary school, it was a huge relief not to have to feel ambivalent about knowing the answers. The first volumes of the Janet and John series were called Books One to Four with additional volumes in 1950 – Through the Garden Gate; Off to Play; I Know a Story – Here We Go in 1951 and Once Upon a Time in 1952.

Not the first

We should forget all this PC nonsense, and send the kids away (on their own) for holidays in the summer in gaily painted caravans, and let them roar down to flooded quarries for a bracing dip before breakfast As Hugh Price notes, 10 there was no clean break between the Progressive readers and Janet and John. Right up until at least 1961, Whitcombe and Tombs continued to print the Progressive readers, obviously to meet a demand, in large runs of 10,000-20,000 at a time. However, the department's annual report for 1950 noted with satisfaction that six of the seven Janet and John titles had been sent out to schools. It commented: 'Already these books, through the use of carefully graded text and attractive illustrations in full colour, are having a beneficial effect on the teaching of reading in the early stages.' 11 I have never been ashamed of reading books which I have kept from my childhood. I've even made a point of going out to buy some which got lost along the way. Five years ago, I made a special trip to the fabulous Hay-on-Wye to buy the Famous Five series because it had to be the versions I had read when I was nine, not the latest reprints where they all wear jeans instead of shorts. Last Christmas, I bought my 38-yr-old fiance a copy of the Roy of the Rovers annual he'd had when he was a kid and to say he was over the moon would be a total understatement. There really is nothing to beat a good bit of nostalgia, especially when it comes in the shape of books. Long may it continue. How was reparation to be made? In sum, education was to reject what Beeby calls its first great myth, survival of the fittest, and embrace the second two: education of the whole child, and equality of opportunity. The creed was encapsulated in the famous statement written by Beeby for Peter Fraser in 1939, although, as he points out, it does not actually mention equality at all: Pat and May had of course played too. They played houses, pretended to be rabbits, dogs and horses, and made a row of chairs into a train. Nothing so wildly imaginative occurs to Janet and John. They seem unable to amuse themselves without a menagerie of pets and a cornucopia of expensive shop-bought props. By the end of Book 1, Here we go, they have played not only with a puppy and some kittens, but also with a swing, some boats, a toy plane, a hoop, a ball and an inflatable rubber horse.

Not to be outdone, they had Hazeley and Morris create a series of spoof Ladybird books just for Penguin. Depressing comedy a b c d e Lightfoot, Liz (10 January 2001). "Cross words greet the return of Janet and John". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 22 August 2019. By the mid-1970s the Janet and John books were looking increasingly outdated with their representation of a middle-class nuclear family. New theories were also being developed on how children learn to read and books and with ‘real’ stories were becoming more popular the Janet and John series was finally discontinued in 1976. According to his BBC biography, John 'Boggy' Marsh started work for the BBC in 1965 intending to be a cameraman but had a natural voice for radio. Beginning on the World Service he then announced programmes for Radio 4 for most of the 1970s, including The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In 1982 he moved to Radio 2, Europe's most popular radio station, as a newsreader.Each story lasted between 2 and 4 minutes – depending on how long Terry Wogan spent laughing mid-story while trying to read them out - and were only ever read out on air when it was John Marsh's turn to be the newsreader. They would be read out regularly on Wake Up to Wogan until 2009 when Terry Wogan retired from the daily breakfast show. When Wogan instead hosted Weekend Wogan on Sundays, the stories remained a highlight of his show. The last episode of Weekend Wogan was broadcast in late 2015. Sadly Sir Terry died in January 2016. Setting the Stories

And whether or not that world ever existed, there are many adults who want to hold its cultural embodiment in their hands. Ladybird books were originally conceived in 1915 by a Loughborough company called Wills & Hepworth. Their ownership has changed over the years, moving to the Pearson group in 1972 and then absorbed by the publishing behemoth, Penguin in 1999.

a b c d Carpenter, Humphrey; Prichard, Mari (1984). The Oxford Companion To Children's Literature. Oxford University Press. pp. 278. ISBN 0-19-860228-6. After six months of the easy life, scholastically speaking, in Primer One, I 'skipped' Primer Two — much to my relief, as it was taught by an elderly woman who was very free with the strap, and was rumoured to be a witch — and went straight to Primer Three. There I met Janet and John and learnt to read.