Ladybird Tuesday: William Tell

Ladybird Tuesday again - as I've said, I like both the illustrations and the philosophy - cheap yet generally good quality books available to the masses. It's quite nice to see a recent surge in interest of these books, even if they're a wee bit flawed.

Mention the name William Tell and the two things you'll likely think of are the overture by Rossini or the image of a man being forced to shoot an arrow through an apple on his son's head. However, the story of William Tell is essentially the Swiss answer to Robin Hood, a folk legend of how the Swiss people, led by folk-hero and bowman Tell, rebelled against their Austrian occupiers and came to form what became Switzerland. Indeed, the apple incident occurred after Tell refused to bow to a despot Austria governor's demand to bow to the governor's hat atop a pole in a village square. As a do-or-die punishment, Tell has to shoot an apple off his own son's head, and as a good bowman manages to save his son's life as well as his own.

The story equally found its way published by Ladybird. This 1979 title was first published as part of the "Read it Yourself" series - a graded reader series that acts part as a reading-for-pleasure series and party as a companion to the Key Words reading scheme but using traditional, pre-exisiting stories instead of the antics of children in an eerily perfect world. The series still remains in print in a revised and retooled form ditching the Key Words link. I know this as I actually used some of the more recent books in the series (which are now just general easy-reading books) when I was an English language assistant in French primary schools a few years ago.

Typical villainous aristocracy...

From what I know about the William Tell legend, the book follows the original story relatively closely yet ultimately simplifies it and expands a bit on the relationship between William Tell and his son Walter (it is a children's book after all). The language is rather ludicrously simple, but I did find the oft-repeated line "twang went the arrow" quite funny.

Twang went the arrow!

What I will admit I'm more troubled is historical accuracy in the illustrations. Call me nitpicky, but a bit of cursory research points to the story of William Tell taking place in the Middle Ages, while the costumes in the illustrations often suggest the 17th century. Nonetheless, I'm probably the only person who has noticed that, and the illustrations by Robert Ayton are nonetheless fine. Like Martin Aitchison's illustrations, they echo British boy's magazines and comics of the post-war era, but that's part of their appeal - they possess a great deal of charm and display a lot of draughtsmanship.

Ladybird Tuesday is based on an idea by Mrs C.