Ladybird

"I struggled with phonetics as a child, there was something about it that wouldn’t allow me to click with it, it ultimately made me feel stupid, which was frustrating and illogical because I could read -  just not the way I was being taught in school. So my mum found an alternate with Ladybird books which . used the method of repetition to help me learn to read. The main characters in these books were Tom and Kate, with their dog Sam - it's funny to think how significant these fictitious characters once were. Ladybird books have such sentimental value to me, beginning with my mum’s mum who had her own prized collection, that my mum defaced one of as a child, drawing rude thought bubbles above the illustrated characters; fast forward to the present, my mum has her own prized collection, and I now have been reconstructing - or defacing - Ladybird books for four years." - Tygar Miles Smith