Book-A-Day Almanac

On October 1, 1942, a brave new experiment in publishing was launched as collaboration between Simon & Schuster and Western Printing and Lithograph Company. The project was described as “a new series of 25 cent books for children,” with an initial print run of 600,000 copies each. Carried in independent bookstores, these volumes also made their way into department stores like Marshall Field’s, Macy’s, and Gimbels, before eventually ending up at corner grocery stories across the land where they were purchased by millions.

The philosophy behind the Golden Books—and they were indeed golden for their publisher—was to provide parents and children with books by the best artists and writers of the day at a very affordable price. So successful was the imprint at attracting talent (people like Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, the Provensens, Garth Williams, and Richard Scarry among other) and at getting the books distributed, that most home libraries of the fifties consisted entirely of Golden Books. Each had a bookplate with “This Little Golden Book Belongs to” printed on the interior front cover where many of the baby boom generation enthusiastically inscribed their names. That first list saw the publication of the bestselling picture book in the United States of all time, The Poky Little Puppy; and other classic titles soon followed: The Color Kittens, Mister Dog, and Rojankovsky’s The Three Bears. Although the paper might have been a bit thin, the art itself was glorious.

Over the years, as I have spoken to audiences across the country, one title seems to have attracted more long-term devotees than most of the others, Margaret Wise Brown’s The Sailor Dog. Grown men often want to discuss it; sometimes their wives say simply, “He’s Scuppers, you know!” Written toward the end of Brown’s career and with artwork by Garth Williams, the book seems to have inspired a desire to sail among many young boys. Scuppers the Sailor Dog loves being out at sea; he keeps everything in its place in a snug bunk. Shipwrecked, he builds a hut, patches his boat, finds more supplies in a foreign land, and heads out: “And here he is where he wants to be—a sailor sailing the deep green sea.”

But many other Golden Books also have their devotees. In Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book, Steve Forbes discusses The Golden Bible for Children and three-time Caldecott winner David Wiesner reminisces on The Animal Book by the Provensens. David Macaulay, who eventually explained the world in The Way Things Work, still owns his copy of The Golden Book of Science for Boys and Girls.

Happy 69th birthday Golden Books. I learned to love reading with these small volumes—as did so many other children.

Here’s a page from Sailor Dog: