Ladybird Tuesday - The Postman and the Postal Service

The Postman and the Postal Service comes from Ladybird series 606B - People at Work and was published in 1965. It looks like a fascinating series, and I've already featured another book from the series - The Nurse. The books in this series are written in more approachable language than some of the more detailed Ladybird books, and would be great reading practice for children learning to read.

The book begins with a look at the very early days of the postal service, five hundred years ago, when the King's letters were carried by a special messenger in a bright red uniform, the very beginning of the Royal Mail. The book explains how the service gradually developed into a network of post boys, carrying other people's letters as well as the King's letters. They travelled by horseback, and every twenty miles or so was an inn where the post boys stopped to change their horses and eat. These inns because post-houses, the very first post offices. It's a really interesting history of the development of the postal service.

The second half of the book covers the postal service as it was when the book was published, beginning with the purchase of a stamp and ending with the postman delivering a letter to the door, with plenty of rich detail along the way about the way in which letters are sorted, transported and delivered. I know that it's a process that would fascinated children - I remember well a trip to the local sorting office when I was a child! Although these days the system must be a lot more mechanical and computerised, I would imagine that many of the basics are still pretty similar. 

If you love Ladybird books, do pop over and visit Ladybird Tuesday, where Being Mrs C is assembling a really comprehensive catalogue of Ladybird books and reviews.

Below you can find links to all my Ladybird Tuesday book posts.

Snow White and Rose Red
Hansel and Gretel
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
The Three Little Pigs
The Old Woman and her Pig
Little Red Riding Hood
The Ugly Duckling
The Railway Children
A Little Princess
A First book of Aesop's Fables

A Ladybird Book about Knitting
More Things to Make - For Special Occasions
Easy to Make Puppets
Learning to Sew
Stamp Collecting
Tricks and Magic

Prehistoric Animals and Fossils
Dinosaurs
Stone Age Man in Britain
Great Civilisations - Crete
Charles Dickens
Nelson
Lives of the Great Composers Book 1
Lives of the Great Composers Book 2
The Story of Music

Plants and How They Grow
The Ladybird Book of the Night Sky
Sea and Air Mammals
The Farm

The Story of Nuclear Power
The Motor Car
How it Works - The Computer
How it Works - The Rocket
The Story of Ships
The Postman and the Postal Service
People at Work - The Nurse

Understanding Numbers
Talkabout Clothes
Going to School
Teaching Reading

Stories of Special Days and Customs
Christmas Customs

Girls and Boys - A Ladybird Book of Childhood