Book News
A golden idea.
The concept was simple enough: Publish an illustrated children’s book that was well-made and affordable for the American family. At the time, the average price of a children’s book was $2 to $3.
George Duplaix, then president of the Artists and Writers Guild Inc., pitched the idea to Simon & Schuster, and Little Golden Books were born.
The first 12 titles were published in October 1942 for 25 cents each. The distinctive illustrated gold-foil spine over the stiff pictorial boards set the Little Golden Book apart and ushered in a new era of children’s books.
Now, more than 65 years later, they have a secure place on the bookshelves of millions of children.
More than 2 billion Little Golden Books have been published. Five of the top six spots on Publishers Weekly’s list of children’s hardcover best sellers from their date of publication through 1995 are Little Golden Books.
From Jesus to Barbie, Mister Rogers to Walt Disney, Noah’s ark to Old MacDonald, Lassie to Winnie-the-Pooh, the list of titles provides a front row seat to our pop culture.
First Lines
The Privileges, By Jonathan Dee
A wedding! The first of a generation; the bride and groom are just twenty- two, young to be married these days. Most of their friends flew in yesterday, and though they are in Pittsburgh, a city of half a million, they affect a good-natured snobbish disorientation, because they come from New York and Chicago but also because it suits their sense of the whole event, the magical disquieting novelty of it, to imagine that they are now in the middle of nowhere. They have all, of course, as children or teenagers, sat through the wedding of some uncle or cousin or in quite a few cases their own mother or father, so they know in that sense what to expect. But this is their first time as actual friends and contemporaries of the betrothed; and the strange, anarchic exuberance they feel is tied to a fear that they are being pulled by surrogates into the world of responsible adulthood, a world whose exit will disappear behind them and for which they feel proudly unready. They are adults pretending to be children pretending to be adults. Last night’s rehearsal dinner ended with the overmatched restaurant manager threatening to call the police. The day to come shapes us as an unstable compound of camp and import. Nine hours before they’re due at the church, many of them are still sleeping, but already the thick old walls of the Pittsburgh Athletic Club seem to hum with a lordly over-enthusiasm.
The week’s bestsellers
Fiction
1. The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown
2. I, Alex Cross, by James Patterson
3. Under the Dome, by Stephen King
4. Pirate Latitudes, by Michael Crichton
5. U Is for Undertow, by Sue Grafton
Nonfiction
1. Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin
2. Have a Little Faith, by Mitch Albom
3. True Compass, by Edward M. Kennedy
4. Arguing With Idiots, by Glenn Beck
5. Open, by Andre Agassi
Publishers Weekly
