I like Peter, I like Jane...but where's Pat the dog? The nostalgia of Ladybird books

Am I the only person who doesn't find that Ladybird's images of childhood suffuse me with a rosy glow?

It isn't that I didn't have a happy childhood or that I didn't like the books. Tootles the Taxi was my all-time favourite, but even then I felt Ladybird presented a world of stifling conformity - vests, lace-up shoes, berets for girls, calling any female adult "Auntie". What we celebrate as a time of freedom - Ladybird children wandered the streets without parents worrying - was in other ways very restricting. Doing things right was what mattered and there was a very narrow consensus about "right", which was largely predicated on making sure children pleased adults - writing thank-you letters, helping daddy wash the car, walking the dog. These are all good and useful things but they aren't empowering or liberating.

And although we go on about the pressure children are under today, it wasn't so very different in the past. Just looking at the pictures from The Ladybird Book of Things to Make reminds me of my hopelessness at making anything out of folding paper (my dancing dolls had always been snipped in the wrong place so that they didn't hold hands). A pompom was about my only creative achievement. Maybe because, as Ladybird helpfully explains, it only needs thick card and wool. Not much can go wrong with just those two.

However, even an old curmudgeon like me can appreciate the deep swell of nostalgia that Ladybird will create with the publication this month of Boys and Girls: A Ladybird Book of Childhood. Full of familiar images from 60 years of Ladybird books, it reflects the astonishing worldwide influence of Ladybird on young children's minds, activities and literacy skills. And for those who really enjoy slipping back in time, two of those Janet and John learn-to-read books are being reissued today. Apparently 70% of Britain's adults learned to read with Janet and John (a figure which disguises that many didn't learn at read at all which rarely gets mentioned).

Still, they can't really be what's missing from today's literacy debate... can they?