Description
No Dust Jacket as issued. The Very Good+ binding is staple-bound, illustrated paper over boards with a paper spine, the front cover shows a bear, a fish in his hand in a swarm of bees with red and black lettering, the rear cover has advertising for The Little Golden Library. The binding is tight and the pages are clean. The lovely color illustrations by Gustaf Tenggren can be found on every page. The book measures 6.7″ wide x 8.0″ tall.
First Edition, “A” is present on the last page.
About the illustrator:
Gustaf Adolf Tenggren (November 3, 1896 – April 9, 1970) was a Swedish illustrator and animator. He is known for his Arthur Rackham-influenced fairy-tale style and use of silhouetted figures with caricatured faces. Tenggren was a chief illustrator for The Walt Disney Company in the late 1930s, in what has been called the Golden Age of American animation, when animated feature films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Bambi and Pinocchio were produced.
In the 1920s, while continuing to illustrate a large number of children’s books, Tenggren worked consistently in advertising up until the Great Depression; in 1936, he was hired by Walt Disney Productions, to work as a chief illustrator with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Tenggren was not only a concept artist on this movie, but he did much of the illustrations for the non-animated tie-ins to the film, most notably the serialized version of Snow White which was featured in two successive issues of Good Housekeeping just prior to the film’s release. He later worked with productions such as Bambi and Pinocchio, as well as backgrounds and atmospheres of films such as The Ugly Duckling and The Old Mill. In January 1939, during the early stages of Bambi, he left the studio and returned to New York, where he had lived before being hired by Disney.
Although his work for the studio was still that way, Tenggren never painted in the Rackham fairy-tale illustration style again after he left Disney. From 1942 to 1962, Tenggren worked for Little Golden Books with illustrations for children’s books such as Saggy Baggy Elephant, Tawny Scrawny Lion, The Shy Little Kitten, Little Black Sambo, and The Poky Little Puppy, which became the single all-time best-selling hardcover children’s book in English; and “King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,” Emma Gelders Sterne’s retelling of the Arthurian Legend. During these years his production increased, as did the marketability of his name with a stream of Tenggren books.
Although the name Gustaf Tenggren remains relatively unknown, his work is widely recognized, both that in the Disney films and his work in the Little Golden Books. After his death, much of his non-Disney art was donated to the University of Minnesota to be included in the Kerlan Collection, a special library focusing on children’s literature. (Wikipedia)
About the publishers:
The Little Golden Books were printed in September 1942 and for sale in stores in October. One and a half million books were sold in just five months. With an initial series of twelve titles each having a print run of 50,000 copies, the first Little Golden Books were priced at a very affordable 25 cents each. Little Golden Books started with publishing firm Simon & Schuster; Western Printing and Lithographing Company in Racine, Wisconsin was Simon & Schuster’s partner in the Little Golden Books venture, with Western handling print operations. Ownership and control of the series have changed several times since; today, Penguin Random House is its current publisher. (Wikipedia)
