W. Murray

The Key Words with Peter and Jane books were written by British educationalist William Murray and first published by Ladybird in 1964. William had worked with children all of his life and had always emphasised the importance of praise and a positive environment to get the best results in learning. He wanted all children to succeed in reading but had found that a significant proportion of children in the UK were having difficulty, so he set out to simplify the learning process.

He wanted to know which words children needed to learn first and which were used most regularly in our everyday language. Little research had previously been conducted on early English usage in the compilation of children's first readers or reading schemes. He teamed up with a senior educational psychologist, Joe McNally, and over the next 3 years they compiled their groundbreaking research in early literacy known as 'Key Words to Literacy'.

The English language has 400,000 words, 240,000 are main words, but most people use 20,000 words. They discovered that of those 20,000 words, relatively few made up a large percentage of all we use each day. If children could learn these "Key Words" first, he knew that it would be easier for them to read, write and spell.

William Murray was commissioned by publishing visionary Douglas Keen to write the "Ladybird Key Words Reading Scheme" of 36 books. The early books taught children to recognise whole words on sight, with a repetitive vocabulary to build fluency and confidence. As the scheme progressed the phonetic approach was introduced.

The distinctive and colourful artwork was also key to the books' success. William worked alongside illustrator Harry Wingfield to create the characters Peter and Jane, who were based on two children who used to play in the artist's street.

Since they were first published, the Key Words books have gone on to sell over 90 million copies throughout the world, helping generations of children learn to read with confidence.