Little Golden Books

We all have fond memories of reading our first book or having story time at night or listening to your favorite story over and over again. It was part of our nightly routine. For many young kids that meant reading from that book with the gold binding, the one with the wonderfully illustrated images and the stories that would just make us feel good! The LITTLE GOLDEN BOOKS were a staple in so many kids lives 

                              The Poky Little Puppy was the most popular Little Golden Book

Little Golden Books,  which was first published by Simon & Schuster  hit the books stores in September of 1942 with 12 titles:

Three Little Kittens
Bedtime Stories
The Alphabet A - Z
Mother Goose
Prayers for Children
The Little Red Hen
Nursery Songs
The Poky Little Puppy
The Golden Book of Fairy Tales
Baby's Book
The Animals of Farmer Jones
This Little Piggy

The whole idea was to produce a colorful, more durable and affordable children’s book than those being published at that time which sold for $2 to $3. Each book would have 42 pages, 28 printed in two-color, and 14 in four-color.

                                                                     Scuffy The Tugboat 

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. Within 5 months they had already sold 1.5 million copies of Little Golden Books. 

 As the years went on Little Golden Books were made for just about every and any TV show or film. Even music groups would have books made about them. The Little Golden Books are still printed today, in fact if you compare a copy of The Poky Little Puppy from 1942 to one that was bought today you would see that it is still the same exact book and has never been changed. Why mess with greatness, why mess with a classic, why mess with something that is golden?

Take a look at some of these Little Golden Books covers, did you have any of them?

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