Little Golden Books
Encyclopedia
- Three Little Kittens
- Bedtime Stories
- Mother GooseMother GooseThe familiar figure of Mother Goose is an imaginary author of a collection of fairy tales and nursery rhymes which are often published as Mother Goose Rhymes. As a character, she appears in one "nursery rhyme". A Christmas pantomime called Mother Goose is often performed in the United Kingdom...
- Prayers for Children
- The Little Red HenThe Little Red HenThe Little Red Hen is an old folk tale, most likely of Russian origin. The best known version in the United States is that popularized by Little Golden Books, a series of children's books published for the mass market since the 1940s. The story is applied in teaching children the virtues of the...
- Nursery Songs
- The Alphabet from A to Z
- The Poky Little PuppyThe Poky Little PuppyThe Poky Little Puppy is a children's book written by Texas author Janette Sebring Lowrey and illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. It was first published in 1942 as one of the first 12 books in the Simon and Schuster series Little Golden Books...
- The Golden Book of Fairy Tales
- Baby's Book of Objects
- The Animals of Farmer Jones
- This Little Piggy and Other Counting Rhymes
As of 2001, nearly 15 million copies of The Poky Little Puppy have been sold, including copies in various languages.
History
The Little Golden Books, which initially sold for 25¢ (rising to 29¢ in 1962), were published by Simon and Schuster in cooperation with the Artist and Writers Guild, Inc. headed by Georges Duplaix. Duplaix had initially thought up the idea for the Little Golden Book series, assisted by Lucille Ogle, and fleshed it out in conversations with officials at Simon and Schuster. Dr. Mary Reed, a professor at the Teachers College of Columbia UniversityColumbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, served as initial editor of the series.
Western Printing and Lithographing Company
Western Publishing
Western Publishing, also known as Western Printing and Lithographing Company was a Racine, Wisconsin firm responsible for publishing the Little Golden Books. Western Publishing also produced children's books and family-related entertainment products as Golden Books Family Entertainment...
in Racine, Wisconsin
Racine, Wisconsin
Racine is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the city had a population of 82,196...
was Simon and Schuster's partner in the Little Golden Books venture. Western handled the actual printing. In 1958, Simon and Schuster sold its interest in Little Golden Books to Western.
Ownership and control of the series has changed several times since. In 2001, Random House acquired Golden Books for about 85 million dollars.
Although the Little Golden Books have remained the backbone of the product line, the enterprise that produced the Little Golden Books has created a variety of children's books in various formats including records, tapes, videos, and even toys and games (the fourth and fifth as "Golden & Design"). Some titles have appeared in several different formats (including but not limited to "A Golden Book").
Many popular authors and illustrators have worked on Little Golden Books and related products including:
- Mary BlairMary BlairMary Blair , born Mary Robinson, was an American artist who was prominent in producing art and animation for The Walt Disney Company, drawing concept art for such films as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South and Cinderella...
- Margaret Wise BrownMargaret Wise BrownMargaret Wise Brown was a prolific American author of children's literature, including the books Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, both illustrated by Clement Hurd.-Biography:...
- Tibor GergelyTibor GergelyTibor Gergely was an artist best known for his work in several popular children's books. Born in Budapest in 1900, he studied art briefly in Vienna before emigrating to the United States in 1939, where he settled in New York City. Largely a self-taught artist, he also contributed several covers...
- Elizabeth Orton JonesElizabeth Orton Jones-Early life:She was born "half past Christmas" in Highland Park, Illinois, to George Roberts Jones, a violinist, and Jessie May Orton, a pianist and a writer. Elizabeth was followed by a brother and a sister...
- Corinne MalvernCorinne MalvernCorinne Malvern was an American commercial artist, active as a fashion advertising artist and illustrator of children's books between the early 1930s and her death in 1956. She painted magazine covers and worked as Art Editor of Ladies Home Journal magazine...
- Jim McDermottJim McDermott (illustrator)Jim McDermott is a New Hampshire-based artist who has illustrated for animation, magazines and comic books....
- Alice Provensen and Martin Provensen
- Seymour ReitSeymour ReitSeymour Victory Reit was the author of over 80 children's books as well as several works for adults. Reit was the creator, with cartoonist Joe Oriolo, of the character Casper the Friendly Ghost...
- Patricia Scarry and Richard ScarryRichard ScarryRichard McClure Scarry was a popular American children's author and illustrator who published over 300 books with total sales of over 100 million units worldwide....
- Bob StaakeBob StaakeBob Staake is an American illustrator, cartoonist, children's book author and designer. He lives and works in Chatham, Massachusetts on the elbow of Cape Cod....
- Feodor Stepanovich RojankovskyFeodor Stepanovich RojankovskyFeodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky , also known as Rojan, was a Russian émigré illustrator. He is best known for his illustrations for children's books, and conversely, for his erotic illustrations.-Biography:...
- Gustaf TenggrenGustaf TenggrenGustaf Adolf Tenggren was a Swedish-American illustrator. He is known for his Arthur Rackham-influenced fairy-tale style and use of silhouetted figures with caricatured faces...
- Jane Werner Watson
- Eloise WilkinEloise WilkinEloise Margaret Wilkin, born Eloise Margaret Burns , was an award-winning American illustrator, best known as an illustrator of Little Golden Books. Many of the picture books she illustrated have become classics of American children's literature...
- Garth WilliamsGarth WilliamsGarth Montgomery Williams was an American artist who came to prominence in the American postwar era as an illustrator of children's books...
- Herbert ZimHerbert ZimHerbert Spencer Zim was a naturalist, author, editor and educator best known as the founder and editor in chief of the Golden Guides series of nature books.-Biography:...
Although the details have changed over the years, the Little Golden Books have maintained a distinctive appearance. A copy of The Poky Little Puppy bought today is essentially the same as one printed in 1942. Both are readily recognizable as Little Golden Books. At the time of the golden anniversary, Golden Books claimed that a billion and a half Little Golden Books had been sold.
Some Little Golden Books and related products have featured popular children's icons from other media, eg. Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
, the Muppets
The Muppets
The Muppets are a group of puppet characters created by Jim Henson starting in 1954–55. Although the term is often used to refer to any puppet that resembles the distinctive style of The Muppet Show, the term is both an informal name and legal trademark owned by the Walt Disney Company in reference...
, Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
, Barbie
Barbie
Barbie is a fashion doll manufactured by the American toy-company Mattel, Inc. and launched in March 1959. American businesswoman Ruth Handler is credited with the creation of the doll using a German doll called Bild Lilli as her inspiration....
, Power Rangers
Power Rangers
Power Rangers is a long-running American entertainment and merchandising franchise built around a live action children's television series featuring teams of costumed heroes...
, etc. Television and movie tie-ins have been particularly popular. Over the years Hopalong Cassidy
Hopalong Cassidy
Hopalong Cassidy is a fictional cowboy hero created in 1904 by the author Clarence E. Mulford, who wrote a series of popular short stories and twenty-eight novels based on the character....
, Cheyenne
Cheyenne
Cheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
, Lassie
Lassie
Lassie is a fictional collie dog character created by Eric Knight in a short story expanded to novel length called Lassie Come-Home. Published in 1940, the novel was filmed by MGM in 1943 as Lassie Come Home with a dog named Pal playing Lassie. Pal then appeared with the stage name "Lassie" in six...
, Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin was the name given to a dog adopted from a WWI battlefield that went on to star in twenty-three Hollywood films. The name was subsequently given to several related German Shepherd dogs featured in fictional stories on film, radio and television.-Origins:The first of the line Rin Tin...
, Captain Kangaroo
Captain Kangaroo
Captain Kangaroo is a children's television series which aired weekday mornings on the American television network CBS for nearly 30 years, from October 3, 1955 until December 8, 1984, making it the longest-running children's television program of its day...
, Mister Rogers
Mister Rogers
Fred McFeely Rogers was an American educator, Presbyterian minister, songwriter, and television host...
, and even Donny and Marie have appeared in Little Golden Books.
Many have dealt with nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
stories, nursery rhyme
Nursery rhyme
The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...
, and fairy tales. Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
titles are popular every year. The fact that many old titles remain in print shows the strong nostalgia
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...
appeal of Little Golden Books.
The official Random House website contains an interesting timeline for Little Golden Books.
In the year 2000, Encore Software produced a series of "Little Golden Books" titles for CD ROM, including the Poky Little Puppy
The Poky Little Puppy
The Poky Little Puppy is a children's book written by Texas author Janette Sebring Lowrey and illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. It was first published in 1942 as one of the first 12 books in the Simon and Schuster series Little Golden Books...
, Mother Goose
Mother Goose
The familiar figure of Mother Goose is an imaginary author of a collection of fairy tales and nursery rhymes which are often published as Mother Goose Rhymes. As a character, she appears in one "nursery rhyme". A Christmas pantomime called Mother Goose is often performed in the United Kingdom...
, Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk is a folktale said by English historian Francis Palgrave to be an oral legend that arrived in England with the Vikings. The tale is closely associated with the tale of Jack the Giant-killer. It is known under a number of versions...
, The Velveteen Rabbit
The Velveteen Rabbit
The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real is a children's novel written by Margery Williams and illustrated by William Nicholson. It chronicles the story of a stuffed rabbit and his quest to become real through the love of his owner. The book was first published in 1922 and has been republished...
, Tootle
Tootle
Tootle is a children's book written by Gertrude Crampton and illustrated by Tibor Gergely in 1945. It is part of Simon and Schuster's Little Golden Books series...
, and The Saggy Baggy Elephant. These 6 individual titles were some of the first major software releases to be produced entirely in Macromedia Flash. They appeared in Time Magazine as part of an article entitled How to Raise a Superkid.
External links
- Information on Little Golden Books by the author of Collecting Little Golden Books.
- The Official "Little Golden Books" Page
- About a dozen Little Golden Books online These are free to read full text versions provided by Golden Books Family Entertainment from their library, for free reading on the web, before that company sold to Random House.
- Little Golden Books Wikia
- Golden Gems @ blogspot