mammybearsbooks Blog Little_Golden_Books-I 20181118

Mammy Bears Books 18 November 2018 · LITTLE GOLDEN BOOKS "Little Golden Books was the brainchild of Georges Duplaix, who in 1940 was head of Artists and Writers Guild Inc., a division of Western Publishing tasked with developing new children's books. Each book would have 42 pages, 28 printed in two-color, and 14 in four-color. The books would be staple-bound. The group originally discussed a 50-cent price for the books, but Western did not want to compete with other 50-cent books already on the market. The group calculated that if the print run for each title was 50,000 copies instead of 25,000, the books could affordably be sold for 25 cents each. The first 12 titles were printed in September 1942 and released to stores in October:[4][5] 1. Three Little Kittens, by Marie Simchow Stern 2. Bedtime Stories, illus. Gustaf Tenggren 3. Mother Goose, by Phyllis Fraser, illus. Gertrude E. Espenscheid 4. Prayers for Children, by Rachel Taft Dixon 5. The Little Red Hen, illus. Rudolf Freund 6. Nursery Songs, by Leah Gale, illus. Corinne Malvern 7. The Alphabet from A to Z, by Leah Gale, illus. Vivienne Blake and Richard Peck 8. The Poky Little Puppy, by Janette Sebring Lowrey, illus. Gustaf Tenggren 9. The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, by Winfield Scott Hoskins 10. Baby's Book of Objects 11. The Animals of Farmer Jones, by Leah Gale, illus. Richard Scarry 12. This Little Piggy and Other Counting Rhymes, by Phyllis Cerf Wagner, illus. Roberta Harris Pfafflin Petty Three editions totaling 1.5 million books sold out within five months of publication in 1942. (Wikipedia) And they are still in print today...truly Golden!