CURIOSITIES:SEEING THE Vintage Ladybird Box for Girls in a bookshop last week was like getting a sharp intake of the smell of liver and onion dinners on the way home from school, writes Alison Martin
Given the clamour for all things retro, it was no surprise that Ladybird decided to release a box-set of their most popular "books for girls". Birthdays and Christmases were all marked with a Ladybird book. The pocket-sized hardbacks were ideal for standing up to the wear and tear of playtimes, class times and holidays. Many original editions, no doubt, have lasted to the present day.
Spanning the 1950s to the 1980s, the six-book vintage collection is more than just a helping of schoolday nostalgia, however. The Nurse, Shopping with Mother, In a Big Store, Knitting, Helping at Home and Understanding Maps each provides a pocket-sized history of society at a time when there was such a thing as "boys' things" and "girls' things". Younger girls in Helping at Home learned how to help mum with the household chores before heading off down to the hardware shop to buy daddy a hammer. When they were not helping to cook food, they could learn how to grow it. Knitting gives a pattern for egg cosies - a long way from the home economic classes of the 1990s, when we got a pattern to make MC Hammer-style trousers.
From The Nurse to Understanding Maps, we get a chance to observe the progressive shift in gender equality over the decades. Some politically correct mams and dads may baulk at the thought of giving their young daughter a storybook on home-making. However, these brightly coloured editions are still informative and fun. Their popularity can be seen on the www.vintageladybird.com website, where fans can swap memories on the discussion board. And although there may not be much call for egg cosies these days, for some of us, a guide to reading maps will have timeless appeal.