A Few More Kinda Little Golden Books!

A few more fond memories from my stash of children's books.  You have to take them out and sun them every 45 or 35 years.

Talk to you soon.

Still Other Little Golden Type Books!

Another lazy Sunday going through my old children's books...browse along, won't you?

Talk to you soon.

Other Little Golden Type Books!

Last Sunday I posted a sheaf of eye candy in the form of my childhood collection of Little Golden Books, I hope you all dug on them even half as much as I have for the last 49 years.

This week I'll drop some more Western Publishing deliciousness on you from my collection of Whitman Tell-A-Tale books.  Western published under a slew of banners, not just limited to the children's book market, they also published those dell, Gold Key and Whitman comic books so many of us remember from our past, and probably all manner of 4 color printing for all manner of other folks besides themselves.  The older I get the less interested I am and more unapologetic I am for my ignorance of the business side of this stuff.  The more important part of it all is the art and happiness that came out of it all.

These were intended with the youngest of readers to hold in their tiny hands...measuring only 5.5" x 6.5" approx. in size, they were perfect for tiny hands to hold and read for hours with the pictures inviting you in so the words could become your friends. 

"ABC a Tale of a Sale" is the story of a guy selling off his entire zoo full of animals, and using their distinctive tails as a way of keeping inventory...colorful stuff!

I read this one till my eyes turned blue...love the art style and dig the story of a huge family who's grandparents come to visit and the youngest kid does his best to grab their attention.  I didn't just re-read this for this description...I didn't have tom it's ingrained in my brain from childhood.

This one I may need a refresher on...but I remember digging the cartoony style!

This was NOT from my toddler years, but rather bought in my teenage years,  The mid to late '70's in a town with only 2 television stations made for a desert climate of trying to get ahold of classic cartoon characters to look at...so I used to sneak a few of these in to drink up.

This WAS from my kiddie-hood.  Love the painted versions of our favorite ducks.

Check out the color pallette on this bad boy.  All those "hot" colors, yet it never gave me the angst that those colors are supposed to represent...somehow they were warm and inviting and really helped me into the world of the writer!

I don't remember the Hoppity Hooper show, though I am a gigantic fan of Jay Ward!  My only real exposure to this group of characters is this book.  The other day I went ahead and ordered a public domain DVD off of Amazon that has a few of these cartoons on it...I await with bated breath!

I always loved the artwork in this one as well.  Disturbing little story here though, it's a bout a hungry lion and every time he meets another animal (who obviously don't want to be dinner) they try and lead him to somebody else he can eat.  By the end, they all get loaded up on a boat to be taken to a "civilized" county where they live out their days in a zoo.  Probably one which won't be re-printed in 2012.

I don't think I ever heard the legend of Johnny Appleseed from anyone other than this book and the Disney cartoon.  Yet it's as ingrained an American legend/folk tale as any I'd heard every day of my life.  Powerful stuff, these little Tell-A-Tale books.

Again..being born in 1963, my memory of these great TV cartoon character is a little fuzzy, so this is my strongest memory (until later in life when te source material became available to me) of Magilla and Mr. Peebles.  O.G. did not appear :)

This cover makes me calm.  Candy and kittens...how centered in your being with happiness can you get?

Another one that beat the cartoon to my brain.  Those HB character designs made it verrrrrrrry apparent that these guys were nothing but fun, though!

These next guys I knew...I should have known by the similarities in characterizations between these books and Dell comics, that there was a connection.

Trains were cool then.  Trains are cool now.

Argue with any 5 years old boy...I dare you.

Thin Arnold was a pretty regular Jeffy bedtime story read, too.   But I got fat anyway.

Another late addition to my collection.  Like the Bugs Bunny book above, I've only had this one for a little over 35 years.

Great cover...and even as a toddler I knew Wally Cox' voice.  Loved it then, loved it now.

Just argue with any 5 year old.  :)

The colors in some of these are just amazing.  They set mood, they clarify images...and this from a guy who knows diddly about color.  These guys were great!!!

I could read this one to my mom before I was supposedly old enough to read.  Had this down by the age of 4...pre-Kindergarten.  

Laugh if you will, I'm puttin' that on my resume!

Have a great Sunday!

Talk to you soon.

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.

"Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" Wednesday 3 of 3

Here, in my third and last post about Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer for this Christmas season, I'm going to make a sidetrack and mention one thing.

LITTLE GOLDEN BOOKS ROCK!!

Remember Little Golden Books? They're still out there you know. The scan for this post are of my very own copy of Little Golden Books' version of our favorite sleigh-leader, which I've probably had since I was 3 or 4...since 1966 or 67 at the very latest.

There's my name on the inside cover leaf to prove it. Eat your heart's out.

Little Golden Books began in 1942 with a couple of innovations that sent them onto almost every American child's bookshelf since.

They were sturdy....proof in the pudding right here evidenced by my 43 year old copy still standing up to strenuous scanning...which had never been thought of before.

They were sold in outlets other than bookstores. Department stores. 5 and Dimes. Clothing stores. Supermarkets. This leads to the final one.

Because they would be produced in such quantity to fill all these outlets, they were affordable.

Extremely affordable.

In 1942 they had a cover price of 25 cents...you'll note that mine own copy from 24 years later is still only marked at 29 cents. In fact, if you pick one up today, in 2009, they are only $2.99. What the hell can you buy for $2.99???? What else that has this much to offer, isn't worth 5 times that price?

I remember what they felt like in my small 3, 4, 5, 6 year old hands...they were easy to handle, but they had weight which gave it import. And all those shiny gold spines look (yes, I said "look" not "looked"...present tense, they're still there) so good lined up on my bookshelf. All square and uniform in size. As a child they looked important, like grown-up books. But they were better than grown-up books. They were filled with magic.

And they were mine.

This book and the Gene Autry record of the Rudolph song were my big connection with this character. As much as I love the Rankin-Bass animated TV special, this was a different era. There was no home video, there was no cable TV. The special was on once a year. That was it. You watched it on TV, then it was gone until next year.

And remember when you were a kid...Christmases were about 10 years apart it seemed, not every 3 months as seems now!

So this book (which still SMELLS the same as when I was a kid by-the-way) was my "hold-it-in-your-hands-and-stare-for-hours-and-get-lost-in-it-forever-or-until-someone-thinks-you-may-have-gone-goofy" experience.

Gorgeous artwork by Richard Scarry. Color schemes and character expressions/poses that are SOOOOO deceptively simple, but mean so much to the eye that "really" looks.

And all in easy to hold, sturdy and important looking Little Golden Book form.

Let's read it together - like always, just click on the thumbnails to enlarge:

That is minimalist set dressing if ever I saw it. Stimulating still for the magic that hides behind it's red, blue and brown.

Them's some mean and hateful names for a reindeer that just wants to fit in and be valuable.

It's hard to draw hoofed animals anthropomorphically. They always want to be drawn on all fours and have rigid backs. Richard Scarry had the secret though...them reindeers is "butt-sleddin'" fools!

Ratted out by rabbits.

Rudolph knows he won't cut it. Everyone told him so. And you know what experts "everyone" is.

There it is again. How'd he undo the lock with hooves? And if I drew this, this way, you'd swear he was doing permanent damage to his spine! Scarry pulls it off though.

Great to hear how the other famous reindeer qualified! I used to try and tell who was who in the crowd of reindeer.

Like trying to tell football players apart without their jerseys though. Just faceless mooks.

There they go again! How's he working that train switch with a hoof?? Scarry makes it possible.

A paintbrush?!? NOW he's gone too far!

Ooooooooooooh...a foggy Christmas Eve...now the plot thickens. Like the fog.

Dasher and Dancer are ego-maniacs. I've always suspected.

Yes. I did notice. My name is NOT on the good list. I've reread this book every year and it's never there.

My favorite picture in the book. Brilliant composition. As brilliant as Rudolph's nose.

That's right Bitches! Y'all can SUCK IT!

That's a happy Christmas!

I hope you liked it.

I hope you go get your kid or grand kid or the neighbors kid a Little Golden Book and you read it together.

I'm going back to the bookshelf.

I got a hankerin' to see what "The Pokey Little Puppy" is up to.

Merry Christmas!