TELL-A-TALE SERIES
by
Jay
The Tell-A-Tale collection was launched in 1982 through a partnership between Ladybird Books (a then-imprint of The Pearson Group) and Pickwick International Inc. (GB), the British subsidiary of Pickwick International Inc which had been established in 1962.
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Recorded and produced by Pickwick International and (initially) in association with The Moss Music Group New York, this selection of children’s audio cassettes accompanied a range of Ladybird Books from 1982-1992.
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Although cassettes were not a creation of the 1980’s (their birth and growth actually began in the 1960s), the availability of stereo tape decks in the 1970’s coupled with the advent of Sony’s Walkman in 1979 paved the way for cassettes to become the most popular format in the UK between 1985 and 1992.
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The subsequent mass production of children’s story cassettes or ‘talking books’ (by virtue of the fact that most were accompanied by a read-along-book) found their way into homes, schools and libraries popularising narratives which ranged from children’s classical literature to the spin-off adventures of familiar television characters.
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Influencing a generation which ranged in years from early childhood to late adolescence, a myriad of recorded material began to emerge from production companies such as Rainbow Communications, Tellastory, Tempo, Marshall Cavendish and Pickwick International.
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In the 1970s and 1980s Pickwick International Inc (GB) released an extensive range of children’s audio cassettes with popular series such as ‘Read with me’, ‘Stick-a-tale’, ‘Puffin Classics’, ‘Cook-along’, ‘Biba’, ‘The Disney Read Along Collection’, ‘Ditto’ and the ‘Tell-A Tale Series’.
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The ‘Tell-A-Tale’ recordings quickly emerged as a market leader in the mid-1980s accompanying a wide range of Ladybird texts from series such as ‘Well Loved Tales’, ‘Children’s Classics’, ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’, ‘Puddle Lane’, ‘Ladybird History Series’, ‘Ladybird Horror Series’, ‘Fables and Legends’, ‘He-Man and the Masters of the Universe’, ‘Transformers’, ‘She-Ra Princess of Power’, ‘The World of Beatrix Potter’, ‘Superman’, ‘Batman’, ‘Barbie’, ‘The Garden Gang’ and standalone recordings such as nursery rhymes, songs and a range of other TV spin-offs.
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Winning a place in the hearts of a generation, earlier recordings from the series are of exceptional quality and remembered most fondly for the use of sophisticated classical pieces as background music, realistic sound effects and wonderfully articulate narrators.
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The past decade has seen an increased interest (on websites such as e-bay and Amazon) in tracking now-rare copies of the cassettes. Some embark on this quest in the hopes to revisit pleasant childhood memories, others to share such experiences with their own children and others still on a mission to track down, gather and somehow preserve the material (in a digital format) for future generations.
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It is in this spirit that we present to you our website.