Research Ladybird books

Over the easter holidays i went to south shields (i think thats where it was,) and i found a great little book shop. Most of the books in it were second hand but it also sticked lots of illustrated special edition books, it was great! They had a big vintage ladybird book section so i had a really good rummage around to find some really nice vintage illustrated books. I picked up some interesting and unique ones that i liked. I thought i would write about them a bit on here.
Lady bird books is a publishers that publish exclusively for children. They have a large range of books ranging from factual to fiction. They started making little children's books covering all topics and stories in the 1940's. These packetise books were a huge hit and modern versions are still made now. I like the vintage books a lot more than the glossy new ones. I picked up three books, here is a bit about my two favourites.  

Talk about animals:
I decided to get the book talk about animals because all of the different styles of illustration throughout the book and i really like animals. It was Illustrated by Harry Winfield and has a real fun vintage feel about it. I really like the diversity of images throughout the book, i don't think iv'e ever seen a book with such a wide range of styles through it. I also love the colour palettes of some pages as they are so unique and bright, for example some pages have sickly pink backgrounds and bright yellow in the illustrations. It is so different but so representative of the time it was published (around the 1940's.) Here are a few of my favourite images from the book.

Hannibal runs away:
What first attracted me to this book is the strange title, what makes it more funny is that hannibal is a hamster. I picked it up and the front is cute as it is a realistic illustration of a hamster. Im usually not to keen on realistic drawings for children's books as i feel they aren't as visually exiting, but the end pages sold it to me as they are a really nice style pretty similar to the style of books that no brow make now. They have simplistic drawings of hamsters using a limited colour palette. I love the way that these pages look and think they are done in a very timeless style as a lot of illustrations now have a similar style. Here is an image of the end pages.