Furthermore, it doesn’t just look at these topics from a standard business point of view. It also includes these dynamics for remote workers participating in meetings by conference calls, meetings for self-employed people and the effect on profit and loss when people are unable to attend a meeting for any reason. It even includes this analysis for other organisations with a captivating case study about The Worshipful Company of Victorian Time Travellers. Where these books differ from the old Ladybird series for younger readers is that the tone of the text is sardonic and, for the most part, sarcastic. The authors clearly have some experience of meetings and didn’t much enjoy it, and that comes across wonderfully here. Indeed, it’s the particular meetings that I have direct experience of that made me laugh the most, particularly the one about the self-employed person.

He told the Independent he wanted to help adults make sense of the world, just as the classic books had helped children through the decades understand how locomotives and computers work. Ladybird Books to close Loughborough plant". 30 November 1998. Archived from the original on 27 September 2003 . Retrieved 24 February 2014. Why aren't I at home? Am I running away from home? Am I scared of home? Why is my brain full of weird, horrible thoughts? Is it because running is so very, very boring? I think these Ladybirds will only appeal to those who want to indulge and gently prod fond childhood memories, and I doubt many would want to read more than a handful. I think two is my limit. The titles and concept are more fun than the content (except for some of the small print). The exception is A Ladybird Book About Donald Trump (my review HERE). Although these are adult books, there’s no explicit mention of sex. This caption was presumably inspired by his awkward pose in the original illustration:

These spoofs have been so successful, there are spoofs of the spoofs - which are far better than this. See Dungbeetle’s We Go To The Gallery, which I reviewed HERE. In this coffee-table book you don't have to, with never before seen covers, excerpts and paraphernalia from the archives, colourfully presented and helpfully divided into the following chapters: Penguin’s publication of a set of satirical spoofs on its classic Ladybird books will no doubt attract a lot of attention from anyone who grew up with them in the 60s, 70s and 80s. With titles such as The Shed; The Wife; The Husband; and The Hipster, Penguin’s tongue-in-cheek “adult” Ladybirds should find a ready market among those who were given the originals as a way of teaching them to read. Got some time on your hands? Then why not make yourself a cup of tea, grab a biscuit and settle down in your favourite armchair to read this unputdownable guide to The Quiet Night In . . .

But he is keener on the Penguin Experts. “I think they’re an entirely different beast. They look like great access points to complex subjects from some brilliant writers.”

Retailers:

To make this eccentric behaviour seem less like a cry for help or the beginnings of a substantial personal crisis, the do-gooder does it for charity. To Prof Lawrence Zeegen, dean of design at Ravensbourne College, London, and author of Ladybird by Design, published to celebrate the imprint’s centenary in 2015, the problems of the latest batch of serious Ladybird books start with the quality of the illustrations. “I think it shows how well designed and illustrated the original series were,” he says. “I understand where they are coming from, but the books do sit rather uncomfortably alongside their existing series, which utilised the original illustrations. They’ve made a reasonable stab at replicating the work, but while not terrible, it’s not nearly as good.”