Little Golden Books make for Happy Kids!

Sunday's a good time to turn your brain off and look at things that make you happy.  Maybe that's the appeal for some people to go to church...

The other day on Facebook, a few other art appreciators and I trailed off topic and someone brought up Little Golden Books, one thing led to another and the scanning started.  Below are the Little Golden Books that sit proudly in my collection.  There are a few more stuffed in a box of Christmas type stuff one of which I've already posted here and the rest I'll get to by December, I'm sure.  

These are books that I've carried with my since I was a wee tyke, with the exception of the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner ones which I picked up in my teen years, just because I was starved for real cartoons.  The late 70's was a very bad time for fans of real cartoons.

People ask, why did you keep your children's books?  You're forty-freakin-nine years old?!?  The answer being, even as a tot, when it came time to toss away such things, I knew that there be true art here.  I knew this was something to treasure.

AND I had the best mom in the world and she spoiled me rotten.

I don't apologize for that.  I deserved it.

Drink in these beautiful "LGB patented washable covers" and see if you don't agree.

And see if you don't find a few familiar books from your own past.

Bob Clampett's Beany & Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent.  We had a B&C board game when I was a kid too.  I was born after the TV show was done airing in my area, so my exposure to these great characters was here first.  I was probably in my 30's before I ever saw an episode of the cartoon and in my 40's before I ever saw the puppet show.  I was sure glad I had this when I finally did!

A Hanna=Barbera cartoon that wasn't even a cartoon at the time.  Didn't stop the drawings from being funny though...just looka that twisted horn dinosaur!  Awesome!

That's right.  I know my colors!  Incredible art in this one.

I learned an awful lot about dinosaurs from this book.  Most of the info is now out of date, but these paintings are wonderful!

As a very small child of 4 or 5 years old in Montana reading this one, I remember turning to my brothers Richard and Mike and saying "Wouldn't it be neat if this place was real?".  They smirked, called me a dumb kid and told me it was.  When I was 22 I moved to California where I knew no one, had no where to live and no job prospects.  This is the first place I went, just in case I had to turn tail back home.

I wish I was small enough to play on a toy boat!

The paintings in this one still have me mesmerized as well.

Hanna-Barbera's early "menagerie characters" look even better in book form than they do on their shows, if you ask me.

Ah, Marge's Little Lulu.  What a bunch of appealingly ugly little kids.

Very off=mode for an officially sanctioned book.  Disney did that kind of things for their albums a lot too...it really lends to the fairy tale aspect.

The aforementioned late-comers to the stacks.  Loved none the less.

Another cartoon from before my time...but when I started learning about cartoon history (you know, the IMPORTANT kind of history) I was ahead of the curve because of this book.

I'm sure I was exposed to other takes on Ma Goose as a kid, but this is the one in my minds eye.  Could there ever be a more perfect Simple Simon than Goofy?  I don't think so.

Another book with some really striking paintings.  That bunny and his magic nose are so deeply ingrained in my brain, I don't thinkyou could get them out with a crowbar!

Disney's Winnie is as iconic as Milne's Winnie.  Not often a character can embody two such distinctly different looks and feels and work well in both.

Never understood this one.  School was a chore I could have done without.  learning was great, but did I really need to be subjected to that environment 7 hours a day?  I don't think so.  These drawings were worth being exposed to, though.

Now for the main answer to "Why do I still have these" and maybe you hadn't thought of this yet "Why were they right where you could find them when it came up on Facebook?".  The answer is simple.

Little Golden Books make me happy.

Talk to you soon.

Bob Clampett - Animation, Television, Comedy Pioneer

Born May 8, 1913, Bob Clampett would be 97 years old today!

One of the young pups who stepped up to directing at Leon Schlesinger's 'Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies" studio after Tex Avery departed, Bob had worked for years as an animator for both Avery and Friz Freleng where he honed his chops.

Clampett's lunacy and pure "cartoon"-ism in his work is truly inspired. Always forsaking the drudgery of storytelling if a good gag could be had, made his cartoons some of the best.

I always felt, that while Avery's zaniness was a natural, Bob's was learned and reached for. Over the years my opinion has changed somewhat and I really love the haphazard style which achieved true cartooning brilliance.

Here's a couple of Bob's great cartoons. Over the last 11 months of doing this blog I'm sometimes frustrated when I embed a video from YouTube and then somewhere down the line it gets removed because of copyright fears by YT or worse, embedding is suddenly denied by the poster. If you ever happen to see a broken link to a video on my blog, please drop me an e-mail and I'll find a replacement for it.

Now for the cartoons...it IS Saturday morning after all!







Somewhere during his time at "Termite Terrace" Bob worked with the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs on nights and weekends, and he was working on a proposed series of theatrical cartoons based on Burroughs' character John Carter, Warlord of Mars.

An ambitious undertaking for sure. Other than a few characters in Disney features (Snow White) and the Fleischer Bros. "Superman" shorts for Paramount, realistic anatomical characters were not really done. A cartoon figure is much easy to animate than one that appears like you or I.

I'm a big fan of the John Carter books and was surprised to learn of these on a "Beany & Cecil" DVD a few years back...these tests look pretty damn good. I would have liked to see them completed.

After leaving Warner Bros., Bob moved his attention to a new medium, television.

Understanding that animation would be too time consuming and cost-prohibitive for a medium that was in it's infancy and cranked out product so quickly (if Bob knew this in 1949...why haven't producer's learned this in 2010?????????) he turned to another love of his, puppetry.

Creating a cast of characters as puppets and assembling voice talents he had worked with in theatrical animation (Daws Butler and Stan Freberg) they set out to do a daily show on Los Angeles station KTLA. Writing over-the-top horrible puns and sometimes adult oriented humor, this kiddie show smash became just as big a hit with the parents.

Albert Einstein once got up from a Harvard staff meeting and announced he had to go..."It's Time for Beany"...

In the 1960's Bob had seen the success that Hanna-Barbera and others had doing limited animation for TV and produced a syndicated cartoon version of the show.

But remember...we only talk about GOOD things on this blog.

Thanks Bob! For being one of the real pioneers, learning the limits of and stretching every medium you dipped your foot into!