Robert Plant - Bones of Saints

The video for Robert Plant's new song 'Bones of Saints' makes some innovative use of old Look and Learn illustrations by artists ranging from John Millar Watt to James E. McConnell.

My Trip to Florida

(* Chris Read has some happy memories of Look and Learn to share. Back in the summer of 1962, the magazine ran what must have been one of the most exciting competitions ever organised by a children's magazine. Usually you'd win some paints or a Parker pen for drawings or neat handwriting. Not this time... but I'll leave it to Chris to explain.)

My Trip to Florida
by Chris Read

I could hardly sit still. I was going to Cape Canaveral in Florida and my Mum & Dad were exhausted with my excitement. Mr Lowe of Look and Learn had been to see me at home and John Sanders the Editor had confirmed it by letter and I wanted to tell everybody!

I had entered a competition from issue 27 of Look and Learn for two of its readers to win an all expenses paid trip to Florida and the Bahamas, including a visit to Cape Canaveral. You had to answer eight general knowledge questions and think of a name for a space ship that would land on the moon. The name LUNALANDA won me one of those competition places, and at 12 years old I was heading for one of those destinations that young boys dream about. Rockets and astronauts. Wow!

There were ten boys and girls in the party, accompanied by Mr Noel Whitcomb of the Daily Mirror, who had sponsored the competition.

We flew from London Airport on Friday, 21 September 1962, refuelling at Idlewild Airport in New York and landing in Nassau, Bahamas at 11.30 p.m. First time on a jet, first time I had left the UK, first time separated from my family, and all I could think about was the next seven days.

Our first night was spent at the Emerald Beach Hotel on Nassau before being flown to West Palm Beach in Florida, where a magnificent lunch was followed by a cruise on the Paddlewheel Queen taking us past all the millionaires’ homes on the waterfront. Many ‘ooh’s’ and ‘aah’s’ and ‘would you look at that’ from everybody. A superb dinner was followed by an overnight stay at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge.

After an early breakfast the next morning we were whisked off to the Cypress Gardens (billed as America’s Tropical Wonderland) in the heart of Florida, travelling in air-conditioned cars at high speed on big, wide roads. We were given another excellent lunch whilst sat under striped umbrellas (it was boiling hot and sunny) overlooking a lake where an amazing aqua show was being performed by ski-jumpers and synchronised water skiers. We were then taken on a guided boat tour of the gardens and exotic plants before we left to motor across to Orlando. Here we overnighted at the Cherry Plaza Hotel, where another superb dinner included something I have not eaten since - caviar (and by choice, I might add!).

The next day was the highlight of the tour - our visit to Cape Canaveral. No cameras were allowed in, and we were given special passes to allow us access to some of the more restricted areas. It was a great honour that we were the first children to be allowed into the Space Centre. The guided tour took us into Mercury Control, and from the observation room we looked down on a hive of technicians working at their consoles, with the wall before them covered in a huge luminous green map of the world, lights and symbols flickering on and off.

From there we were taken to see a white room in one of the hangers - where no fresh air or dust enters the room - and watched the technicians as they carefully checked components before putting them in place in the space capsule they were building. Fantastic!

We were taken to the giant hangers where the Apollo and Gemini Spacecraft stood, our minds boggling at the power needed to get them off the ground. And then we were clamouring around an actual space capsule, trying to imagine what all the knobs and buttons were for and what it would feel like to be an astronaut alone in space in such a small container? Unfortunately, there was only one astronaut on the base at the time we were there, Walter M Schirra, but he was being put through a simulation flight and wasn’t available for us to talk to.

For the last part of the tour we boarded an official US Navy bus and were driven round the various complexes that make up the launch pads for the Titan, Jupiter, Gemini and Atlas rockets. We got off the bus at Complex 34, where a huge Saturn rocket was being assembled for launch, and watched spellbound from about 200 yards away as the nose cone was winched slowly from the ground towards its final destination. We were unlucky to find out that we were a few days too early to watch this particular rocket being launched. We were taken down into the blockhouse - another control room full of complicated machines and designed to withstand the blast from rockets thrusters - and watched the activity on the ground through the specially designed periscope. Before we knew it, it was time to go.

What a cracking day! We should have been exhausted, but were buzzing with what we had seen. When we got back to the cars, talking all over each other, the 190 mile drive down to Miami Beach and the luxurious Carillon Hotel seemed to take but minutes. After all the excitement of the day, I think we managed to get to sleep sometime in the early hours of the morning.

The following day, Tuesday, was spent at Miami Seaquarium being entertained by the many tricks taught to the dolphins and porpoises, and watching the sharks being fed raw meat for their meals.

Wednesday morning was free time. Some of us spent it in and around the hotel pool, others to see what they could find in the shops. In the afternoon, we were received by the Mayor of Miami at the Torch of Friendship Monument, and we were each presented with two scrolls. One was a ‘Scroll of Friendship of the City of Miami’, and the second to make us an ‘Honorary Citizen of the State of Florida’. The Mayor then invited us to a sumptuous banquet in our honour that evening at the plush Columbus Hotel.

The following day, Thursday 27 September 1962, we were packing our bags and preparing to fly home via Nassau (where we were able to spend a few hours shopping for souvenirs) and New York. As the Boeing 707 thundered down the runway in Nassau and lifted us over the clear blue waters, I realised that I had had a holiday that in all probability would never be matched.

(* My thanks to Chris for sharing his memories and photos of his holiday of a lifetime.)

Look and Learn on the road

Spent the day at the Brand Exhibition at Olympia where Look and Learn had a booth. The exhibition is where a lot of companies show off their latest products -- characters rather than whole product lines, although there was plenty of product on show, too, from a giant Lego Millennium Falcon to the latest in Japanese trading card games.

We were there to promote the vast range of images Look and Learn has the rights too and took the opportunity to hand out sample magazines from the reprint series we've been doing. (Just in case you're new to Bear Alley, you can find out more about subscribing to the "best of..." magazine at the Look and Learn website subscription page.) We had a few puzzled looks from folk who were either too young to remember the original magazine and who probably thought we were on a subscription drive; this was more than made up for by the number of people who grinned broadly and announced that they remembered the magazine from childhood. Some could even remember specific features and strips.

There were quite a few meetings which will hopefully turn into some interesting items in the future since the visitors to these kind of shows range from greetings cards manufacturers to jigsaw puzzle makers, book publishers, trading card producers... you name it and they were probably there.

As there was a ban on cameras I only managed to take a couple of snapshots. You can see Stephen Pickles, who edits the magazine and recently produced The Bumper Book of Look and Learn, and Pooja who handles all the artwork that we put up on the website's picture gallery and various other production duties. Laurence, our publisher, managed to keep his back to the camera or was in meetings so has escaped appearing in today's little picture parade.

Sadly, I didn't get my picture taken with the giant Paddington Bear who was wandering around the show, but I did get a snap of the Paddington I'd like to have taken home. After all, there was a huge notice attached to him saying "Please look after this bear..."

Look and Learn in The Oldie

The August issue of The Oldie has a piece on Look and Learn which describes it a "a gem of a paper, its 1950s minor-public school world view an antidote an antidote to the preponderance of pre-teen magazines telling girls how to look sexy, or boys how to be a successful assassin in a PlayStation game."

"Would today's children think the same?" The Oldie asks. And for once I can reply... we've actually had some very good feedback from parents about how much their children enjoy reading the paper. Having done a few interviews about Look and Learn, I know for a fact that it's perceived as a magazine that only "swots and Lord Snootys" (as the Oldie calls them) would read. Not true. Not true by a long shot. Given a chance, most children will find something in the magazine that they like. If they don't particularly fancy the history article on one page, the feature on animals on the next page might grab their attention, or the piece on 'Famous Aircraft' or the reprint of 'The Trigan Empire'. I've watched children reading the magazine and I've not seen one flick through the contents without finding something that they want to read. And they do read... the magazine is as well written as it is illustrated. More often than not, when they find one thing they enjoy, they'll go back to the beginning and take another look at things they previously skipped over.

I was in the Look and Learn office yesterday so I had a chance to look through a copy of The Bumper Book of Look and Learn. It's fantastic. I can't imagine anyone who has pre-ordered a copy of the book being disappointed. It's huge, full-colour throughout and the artwork has reproduced superbly. A lot of the artwork was taken from original art boards, dropped into scans of text, so it has the feel and look of the original pages but with the artwork looking better than it ever did in the printed magazine. This link will take you to more information on the book and further links to where you can order copies.

Look and Learn website

The Look and Learn website has undergone something of a revamp and now has a host of new features including a blog-style column for articles culled from the pages of Look and Learn; there are only a handful up at the moment but it should develop quickly. The selection is deliberately somewhat random -- so far you'll find Aardvarks rubbing shoulders with Edmund Spenser's 'The Faerie Queen' and Neville Chamberlain waving his famous piece of paper at Evans of the Broke.

We've also uploaded a number of issues of The Children's Newspaper, the famous Arthur Mee-edited magazine that ran from 1919 to 1965. It's a fascinating trip back in time to bygone years. Today's issue, for instance, is from 16 April 1938 and contains a piece noting that there are now 40 million motor-vehicles on the road; elsewhere on the same page you'll learn that it was the centenary anniversary of the invention of blotting paper and a manufacturer from Melbourne was looking for 30 spinners to take from Lancashire to Australia to teach Australian workers how to spin cotton.

The Children's Newspaper was definitely of its time: some of the pieces show how insensitive we were to race and creed back then; the run of Children's Newspaper shows how attitudes and lifestyles changed over those 46 years. It also follows all the major discoveries in science and about our world and others although I'm guessing that social historians will be more interested in how it charts the growth of things like television and pop music.

A history of the paper can be found here. LLM will also be making the whole paper available in searchable PDF format on a set of DVDs at the knockdown price of £59.99 in June. The set can be pre-ordered here.

I've been quite astonished at the success of our children's art competition. We've now had over 400 entries with increasing numbers coming from abroad -- the website is global, after all. There are some very imaginative and colourful entries and, if you have kids, why not encourage them to try their hands.

The Picture Gallery, which is my corner of the site these days, is now up to 15,745 images and there are many, many more to follow. I arrived back home from the office last week with half a terabyte of artwork images on a spiffy new hard drive, so that'll be keeping me busy over the next few months. A vast amount of original artwork is in the process of being photographed and cleaned up so we will have many more examples going up over the coming weeks.

So that's phase 2 of the website up and running... go visit the site and take a look for yourselves. Send some comments into the blog, look at the stunning array of pictures, download a copy of The Children's Newspaper... go on. You know you want to.