From
the evidence I have gathered it would appear that Ladybird
started producing Wall Pictures and Sentence Cards in 1968,
the same year that the Key Words reading Scheme was launched.
These Wall Pictures were not for sale to the general public
but were instead sold directly to schools around the country
and were designed to compliment the Key Words books, and act
as a teaching aid for classroom reading.
These pictures were issued as colour-coded sets, each containg
six colour pictures each measuring 19 x 14.5 inches. Each
set of six pictures accompanied one of the Key Words books,
and although I have not seen every set produced I am presuming
there must be 36 different sets, one for each of the Key Words
books.
The cardboard box that contained the six pictures for each
set could be converted to a display stand for the pictures,
but most schools simply attached them to the walls of the
classroom.
Collecting Ladybird
Wall Pictures
Ladybird
Wall Pictures were not produced in large quantities, and as
mentioned above, were sold directly to schools and eductaional
establisments and are therefore fairly difficult to find.
There is a good chance that after years of use within the
classroom most of these poster may have been discarded and
ended up in the rubbish tips around the country, but they
can appear for sale occasionally. In March 2011 six unopened
complete sets in very good condition appeared on eBay with
a starting price of £14.99 per set.
The Wee Web has bought several sets from visitors to our website,
some being from as far away as Canada and Australia, and we
have found that they rarely show up with their sentence cards.
Finding a complete set with all the sentence cards and in
their original box is a rare occurence.
