Well Loved Tales

Well Loved Tales was a series of illustrated re-tellings of fairy tales and other traditional stories published by Ladybird between 1964 and the early 1990s. The titles were labelled as "easy reading" and were graded depending on such aspects as their length, complexity and vocabulary. The first title in the series was Cinderella, and over the next decade, twenty seven titles were published, all written by Vera Southgate. In 1979, the look and format of the books changed. The books now universally featured a green spine and back cover, as well as a standard logo. The series also broke with the Ladybird tradition of having a left page of just text and a right page of just picture, and the illustrations became more stylised than the previous editions. Under this new look, even more titles came to be added over the course of the next decade, starting with The Ugly Duckling, Pinocchio and Tom Thumb.

The series gradually went out of print in the early 1990s, and was replaced by the "Favourite Tales" system, which reused some of its predecessors' illustrations. That series was eventually replaced by the "Ladybird Tales" series, which reused the original Well Loved Tales texts.

List of tales published in the series

• The Elves and the Shoemaker
• The Three Little Pigs
• The Gingerbread Man
• The Little Red Hen
• The Princess and the Pea
• The Sly Fox and the Little Red Hen
• The Three Billy Goats Gruff
• Chicken Licken
• The Enormous Turnip
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• The Magic Porridge Pot
• The Big Pancake
• The Old Woman and her Pig
• The Ugly Duckling
• The Emperor's New Clothes
• Thumbelina
• Town Mouse and Country Mouse
• The Tinder Box
• The Twelve Dancing Princesses
• Sleeping Beauty
• Dick Whittington and his Cat
• Puss in Boots
• Rumpelstiltskin
• Rapunzel
• The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids
• Little Red Riding Hood
• The Musicians of Bremen
• Pinocchio
• The Golden Goose
• Hansel and Gretel
• The Goose Girl
• The Brave Little Tailor
• The Emperor and the Nightingale
• The Pied Piper of Hamelin
• Cinderella
• Jack and the Beanstalk
• Beauty and the Beast
• Snow White and Rose Red
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• The Princess and the Frog
• Tom Thumb
• The Little Mermaid
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice
• The Snow Queen
• The Wizard of Oz
• The Firebird
• Peter and the Wolf

See also

Ladybird Books