Most of us are familiar with the Ladybird books developed from the 1960s: the enigmatic drawings; the varying type size depending on your reading proficiency; the vast reaches of subject matter...

'Forty years on', reports Michael Bracewell in the Guardian, 'those romanticised images are enjoying a renaissance. Seen today as artisan products of popular culture, these illustrations combine the pleasures of nostalgia with visual immediacy – a winning combination for a generation of artists and collectors brought up on the instant impact of album sleeves and advertising.'

The early series was illustrated by the artists John Berry and Martin Aitchison, 'depicting a postwar world of order and prosperity, at once idyllic and hierarchical – a place of safety. …there were simple stories of domestic routine – of shopping in a sunny high street, where kindly, silver-haired shopkeepers wrapped everything in brown paper, and Mummy wore gloves.'

Berry and Aitchison's work for Ladybird goes on show at the Simon Finch gallery in London next week where the illustrations carry a price tag of around £1,500 each.

'I just wanted to show them because I remembered them so clearly from when I was a child,' says Laurence Johns, the exhibition's co-organiser. 'When we were kids, we thought that we'd all have jobs like the ones in the Ladybird books – a policeman with a torch, a fireman ... It just didn't work out like that. What would they do now? They'd have to have a picture of some call centre in Asia.'

'The appeal of these illustrations to a contemporary audience, and to new collectors,' concludes Bracewell 'lies in their ability to enfold the viewer in their world – a slower, kinder place' – and your childhood memories, the price of a small car!