I have moved house a couple of times since my children have grown up. A lot of the books went to friends, charity shops, and – yes, it had to be done – the skip. Don’t tell my daughters. Bookshops, and libraries, have to change their stock and move with the times too.
So it was tantalising to learn that there is a Penguin archive – see an article, with a comment about ‘mere paperback form’, about a visit to the Puffin shelves
But it was fiction that became the real business of Puffin. High up, I can see the red-and-white bands of the first Puffins, published in 1941 by the original editor, Eleanor Graham, who had to work hard to convince publishers – and authors – to let her sell their work in mere paperback form. She began with five books that included Barbara Euphan Todd’s Worzel Gummidge and Mrs Molesworth’s The Cuckoo Clock. Eve Garnett’s The Family from One End Street was published the following year, its cover decorated with author illustrations as sweet and strong as the book itself; they are used to this day.
And for those of us who grew up with Ladybirds, there are recent obituaries in the Telegraph and the Guardian of John Berry, who illustrated many of them:
His pictures for the 20 books of the Ladybird People at Work series form a complete visual record of British industry in the early 1960s – an age of industrial prosperity where potteries, coalmines and car manufacture were flourishing, while obliging porters carried suitcases at railway stations and the only equipment a smiling customs officer required was a torch to shine into ladies’ handbags.
Do you still have old copies of children’s books? At a recent tutorial, some enduring favourites emerged, having been passed down the generations. I’m reduced to searching for them on bookmooch, a book swap website.
