Ladybird Books - Identify and Value

In 2004 a first edition Ladybird book from series 413 entitled 'Baby's First Book' sold on eBay for £352.00

The first two digits in a Ladybird series number indicates the year the first title in that series was published

Beatrix Potter once employed illustrator Ernest Aris (series 474) but later fell out with him when he named one of his rabbit characters 'Peter' - she accused him of plagiarism.

The Wee Web were approached in Spring 2006 by Miller's Collectables asking to provide them with information regarding collectable Ladybird titles along with image samples.

From an article on The Wee Web -

The Computer from the How it Works series 654 is quite a common title in it's standard trade edition. But this edition was also printed privately for the Ministry of Defence in 1972.

Up until recently we started to believe this book to be a myth as we had never come across an edition or heard of anyone owning one, but after getting in touch with Douglas Keen, long-serving Editorial Director of Ladybird Books, it's existance was varified. See question 4 in our interview with Mr Keen

This private edition was limited to 80 - 100 copies and was printed without the usual Ladybird copyright information, and was produced in plain boards.The plain printing style of these 80 editions was at the request of the M.O.D., as they did not want their trainee staff to know that they were learning from a Ladybird book.

Some collectors doubt the existence of this book and although we have never seen a copy, we have spoken to an ex-employee of Ladybird who confirmed it's printing and kindly gave us the information above.

In our exhaustive search for this title the M.O.D. did spare the time to have a look at their library archive but came up with nothing. Although this was not exactly a state of National Security, they did say that it is possible that the book still existed as their archive only included books. They suggested that 'our title' could have been considered a training pamphlet which would not belong in their database.

Edited to add comment from a reader, John Muschialli

I worked for Ladybird Books for forty years, and was bindery manager & technical manager.
I was responsible for the production of the 250 copies of the computer book for the MOD.And the information you have is not correct.There are other books out there rearer than this,ie special editions that I did for Buckingham Palace, And the limited edition of tootles numbered one upwards for all the staff being made redundant. - John Muschialli

Always great to have more facts and more than happy to be corrected here, thanks for commenting John