The Sky at Night
April 3, 2011 at 8:05 pm | Posted in Learning Stuff | Leave a commentTags: Hubble, Ladybird Books, Professor Brian Cox, The Night Sky, Wonders of the Universe
Like a large proportion of the population, I’ve been obsessed by Professor Brian Cox’s BBC TV series, Wonders of the Universe (which has just finished but is still available on iplayer). I confess that it is causing me a small amount of existential angst – as the programme’s webpages state “the ravaging effects of time are all around us. The vast universe is subject to these same laws of change. As we look out to the cosmos, we can see the story of its evolution unfold, from the death of the first stars to the birth of the youngest. This journey from birth to death will ultimately lead to the destruction not just of our planet, but also the entire universe, and with it the end of time itself”. But aside from this minor issue, I’m thoroughly fascinated and am contemplating a holiday to the Channel Island of Sark which has recently been designated the world’s first dark sky island. Incidentally, Sark itself sounds like the ideal setting for a Blyton story with its craggy coastline, wealth of wildlife and no cars (lots of tractors though). Maybe there is scope for a mystery of some sort here too, I don’t know.
To return to stargazing: in Five Get into Trouble a delightfully mild Easter break gives the Five ample opportunity for observing the sky at night. The weather is so fine that on the first night of their cycling tour Julian decrees that tents can be dispensed with. ‘”How smashing!” said Anne. “I’d love to lie and look at the stars.”‘ Snuggling down in their sleeping bags, George draws Julian’s attention to a “glorious star – like a little round lamp. What is it?” The ever-knowledgeable Julian replies “It’s not a star really – it’s Venus, one of the planets […] But it’s called the Evening Star. Fancy you not knowing that George, don’t they teach you anything at your school?”
I wonder if George is pondering some of the more profound questions of existence as she ‘gaze[s] unblinkingly at the bright evening star for a minute’ before falling suddenly asleep? In a pre-Brian Cox era, if George wanted to find out more about the solar system, she could perhaps turn to Ladybird book, The Night Sky (1965), which tells us more about Venus (illustration to the right):
‘When you see what looks like a brilliant star in the west or south-west in the evening, shining all alone in the sky before the other stars appear, it is almost certainly the planet Venus. When it is not an evening star, it is a morning star in the east or south-east before sunrise. It alternates between evening and morning, spending seven or eight months in each, with only a short absence in between.’
The front and back endpapers of The Night Sky have sky charts for different times of year, and there are small sections on various heavenly bodies and on how to spot key stars and constellations such as the North Star and Orion the Hunter. Ladybird now sell prints of some of these, including this one of the Orion Nebula (above left). Even better perhaps (because it’s real!) is this image below, taken by the Hubble space telescope. The Orion nebula is 1,500 light years away from Earth and there are more than 3,000 stars visible in this picture. This and many more beautiful images are available to download from the Hubble website. Happy stargazing!
Vintage Ladybirds
November 15, 2009 at 9:58 pm | Posted in Anne, Dick, George, Julian, Learning Stuff | 1 CommentTags: Douglas Keen, Ladybird Books, Oxfam Books, Vinatge Ladybird
Vintage Ladybirds are everywhere nowadays. As well as being easily available via the internet, my local market is just one of the many places in London where you can pick up these children’s classics from the 1960s, 70s and 80s for a few pounds each. When the excellent Magdalen Street branch of Oxfam in my home town of Norwich received a massive donation of Ladybirds and put them in the window they were all snapped up within two days (or so my mum tells me).
Ladybirds would be just the type of the books the Five (well, Four – Timmy probably not being a great reader despite his many other talents) would enjoy reading. Fairytales and Learn About Sewing for Anne, Learn About Tricks and Magic for Dick (who were are told is an aspiring magician), 
The Ladybird Book of Sailing and Boating and Man on the Sea for George, and The Ladybird Book of the Night Sky and history books such as The Romans in Britain for Julian (these would aid him in his attempts to show off his superior knowledge to the girls).
Books about camping and map reading would have come in handy all round, and if only the Five had had Butterflies and Moths 
when they went to Billycock Hill,they might have more successfully won over those ‘queer’ butterfly men.
The first Ladybird story books came out during the First World War but it was not until the Second World War that the familiar pocket sized Ladybirds appeared. The idea for the first factual book came about in 1948. The man responsible for this, Douglas Keen (1913-2008), would become the editorial director of Ladybird and go on to shape the education and reading habits of generations of children. Keen had a wide-ranging set of interests, from the natural world to religion and history. He commissioned experts to write the books, and a top group of artists to illustrate them.
Like Penguin books from the 30s onwards, value for money was key in persuading readers (children in this case) to buy rather than borrow Ladybirds and the books remained at 2/6d (two shillings and six pence) for thirty years.
Many of the families depicted in the books were typical middle class nuclear families, a fact which Cressida Connelly, author of Keen’s obituary, suggests may represent a measure of wish-fulfillment as Keen himself came from a broken working class family. 
To a certain extent, the same could be said of the Five and Enid Blyton. Blyton’s father also left the family when she was at an impressionable age, and she cut herself off from the rest of her family when she left home to train as a teacher. Although George’s home life is far from perfect, especially as presented in the first adventure, Five on a Treasure Island, Fanny is a caring mother and Quentin’s heart is in the right place, however well he hides it. Perhaps he was so grumpy because he didn’t want to be disturbed when busy penning one of the Ladybird science books?
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