Description
No Jacket. Very Good condition, illustrated paper over boards, Santa reading a book sitting in a chair by a Christmas tree with toys, rear cover advertising for Tell-a-Tales books, shelf wear, corners bumped, head and foot of spine and corners wear. Binding is tight and pages are clean. Zillah Lesko color illustrations can be found at the turn of every page.
About the publisher:
Whitman Publishing is an American book publishing company which started as a subsidiary of the Western Printing & Lithographing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. In about 1915, Western began printing and binding a line of juvenile books for the Hamming-Whitman Publishing Company of Chicago. A few years later Hamming-Whitman went bankrupt, and Western took over the company, found success in selling the inventory of low-cost juvenile books, and formed the Whitman Publishing Company.
From the early 1900s to the mid 1980s, Whitman was a popular children’s book publisher. For decades it was a subsidiary of Western Publishing Company. In 1933 the company signed a licensing contract with Walt Disney to produce books based on Disney cartoon characters, such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy.
Books about movie and television dog stars were published. Whitman also published Whitman Authorized Editions with stories featuring fictionalized versions of popular actresses of the 1940s and, later, novels based upon popular television shows, such as Captain Kangaroo, The Patty Duke Show, and The Beverly Hillbillies.
One of Whitman’s most popular mystery series was Trixie Belden. In 1977 they launched the Trixie Belden Fan Club, and issued a lower-priced paperback book format of the series. At the time some booksellers stated that the Trixie Belden books were more popular than Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys books. Whitman published the Big Little Books and Better Little Books. The early Big Little Books had print runs of 250,000 to 350,000 for each title, with no reprints.
Whitman now primarily produces coin and stamp collecting books and materials. The company is owned by Anderson Press.
