Lady Bird

Old-style Ladybird books are word perfect

The Peter and Jane stories of the 1960s taught millions of children including myself to read before more falling victims progress to other methods in schools. Now the Ladybird series may hold a lesson for today's generation after a study found that children need to master only 100 words before they can move on to books.

Academics at Warwick University said that teachers were wasting time getting children to learn more words. Instead, just as in the Peter and Jane books, children should master the 100 most common English words and then learn others by reading a wide range of stories. The Government's literacy strategy requires children to learn 158 words by the age of 7. But the 1 million study by Jonathan Solity and Janet Vousden, of the Warwick University Institute of Education, found that only 100 of the most common words were needed to tackle any book, including adult fiction and non-fiction.

Ladybird's Peter and Jane

Let me try to hunt for the books again. Can anyone tell me where to buy?