Friendly Tales - A Little Golden Book Collection - Margaret Wise Brown

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Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon, wrote many stories for Golden Books. Now, for the first time, twenty of her best-loved tales are together in one volume, including such favourites as The Sailor Dog, Home for a Bunny, and The Color Kittens. Here too are beloved poems from The Friendly Book and The Golden Bunny, and stories that have not been in print in many years, such as "The Brave Life Saver" from The Little Fat Policeman.

About Little Golden Books

Little Golden Books is a popular series of children's books. The first 12 titles were published in September 1942:

1. The Poky Little Puppy
2. Three Little Kittens
3. Bedtime Stories
4. The Alphabet A- Z
5. Mother Goose
6. Prayers for Children
7. The Little Red Hen
8. Nursery Songs
9. The Golden Book of Fairy Tales
10. Baby's Book
11. The Animals of Farmer Jones
12. This Little Piggy

In 1941, children's books normally sold for $ 2-$ 3; a luxury for many families. George Duplaix, president of the Artists and Writers Guild, Inc. (a joint interest of Simon & Schuster Publishing and Western Printing) came up with the concept of developing a colorful children's book that was durable and affordable for most American families. In September 1942 the first twelve Little Golden Books were published, and retailed for 25 cents per book.

Little Golden Books were an instant success story, even though WWII was on and paper shortages loomed. Five months after the launch, 1.5 million copies had been printed, and LGBs were in their third printing. 

Many famous writers and illustrators created Little Golden Books, notably Margaret Wise Brown, author of GOODNIGHT MOON (Harper). Her LGBs were often illustrated by Garth Williams, most famous for his illustrations for CHARLOTTE'S WEB, STUART LITTLE, and the "Little House" series. Richard Scarry began his career at Golden Books and did most of his most famous books here, from Little Golden Books to his beloved oversized books CARS AND TRUCKS AND THINGS THAT GO, and RICHARD SCARRY'S BEST WORD BOOK EVER! Eloise Wilkin, famous for her stunning paintings of cherubic children, illustrated dozens of LGBs. Caldecott medalists James Marshall, Tibor Gergely, Leonard Weisgard, Alice and Martin Provensen, and Trina Schart Hyman have illustrated Little Golden Books. 

• Margaret Wise Brown
• Tibor Gergely
• Corinne Malvern
• Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky
• Patricia Scarry and Richard Scarry
• Gustaf Tenggren
• Jane Werner Watson
• Eloise Wilkin
• Garth Williams
• Mary Blair
• Herbert Zim
• Seymour Reit
  
• Jim McDermott
• Alice Provensen and Martin Provensen
• Bob Staake

Little Golden Books have mirrored children's popular culture over the years, having featured Lassie, Raggedy Ann, Uncle Wiggily, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Howdy Doody, Annie Oakley, Captain Kangaroo, Bozo the Clown, Gene Autrey, The Lone Ranger, Smokey Bear, Disney, Warner Brothers, Hanna Barbera, Sesame Street, Pokemon, and Between the Lions characters, Mister Rogers, Barney, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Underdog, Peter Cottontail, Barbie, and others. Dr. Ruth Westheimer has just penned a story about grandparents starring herself. 

Although the details have changed over the years, the Little Golden Books have maintained a distinctive appearance. A copy of The Poky Little Puppy bought today is essentially the same as one printed in 1942. Both are readily recognizable as Little Golden Books. At the time of the golden anniversary, Golden Books claimed that a billion and a half Little Golden Books had been sold.

Ownership and control of the series has changed several times since. In 2001, Random House acquired Golden Books for about 85 million dollars.

As of 2005, 15 million copies of The Poky Little Puppy have been sold, including copies in various languages.

Today, Little Golden Books are an icon. The Smithsonian Institution includes Little Golden Books and artwork in its Division of Cultural History.

About Margaret Wise Brown

Margaret Wise Brown (23 May 1910 – 13 November 1952) was a prolific American author of children's literature, including the books Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, both illustrated by Clement Hurd.

The middle child of three whose parents suffered from an unhappy marriage, Brown was born in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and in 1923 attended boarding school in Woodstock, Connecticut, while her parents were living in Canterbury. She began attending Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1926, where she did well in athletics. After graduation in 1928, Brown went on to Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia.

Following her graduation with a B.A. in English from Hollins in 1932, Brown worked as a teacher, and also studied art. It was while working at the Bank Street Experimental School in New York City that she started writing books for children. Her first book was When the Wind Blew, published in 1937 by Harper & Brothers.

Brown then went on to develop her Here and Now stories, and later the Noisy Book series while employed as an editor at William R. Scott. Her popular book The Little Fur Family, illustrated by Garth Williams, was published in 1946. Also in 1946, Brown wrote The Little Island under the pseudonym Golden MacDonald (illustrated by Leonard Weisgard), which won the Caldecott Medal in 1947. In the early 1950s, she wrote several books for the Little Golden Books series including The Color Kittens, Mister Dog and Sailor Dog.

Brown (nicknamed "Brownie" by her friends), dated the Prince of Spain, Juan Carlos, and in the summer of 1940 began a long-term relationship with Michael Strange (a.k.a. Blanche Oelrichs), poet/playwright, actress, and the former wife of John Barrymore. The relationship, which began as a mentoring one, eventually became romantic, and included co-habitating at 10 Gracie Square, in Manhattan, beginning in 1943. Strange, who was twenty years Brown's senior, died in 1950.

In 1952 Brown met James Stillman Rockefeller Jr. at a party, and they became engaged. Later that year, while on a book tour in Nice, France, she unexpectedly died at 42 of an embolism, two weeks after emergency surgery for an ovarian cyst. (Kicking up her leg to show the doctor how well she was feeling ironically caused a blood clot that had formed in her leg to dislodge and travel to her heart.) By the time of Brown's death, she had authored well over one hundred books. Her ashes were scattered at her island home, "The Only House" in Vinalhaven, Maine.

Brown bequeathed the royalties to many of her books including Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny to Albert Clarke, the son of a neighbor who was nine years old when she died. In 2000, reporter Joshua Prager detailed in the Wall Street Journal the troubled life of Mr. Clarke, who has squandered the millions of dollars the books have earned him and who believes that Wise Brown was his mother, a claim others dismiss.

Brown left behind over 70 unpublished manuscripts. Her sister, Roberta Brown Rauch, after unsuccessfully trying to sell them, kept them in a cedar trunk for decades. In 1991, Amy Gary of WaterMark Inc., rediscovered the paper-clipped bundles of the more than 500 typewritten pages and set about getting the stories published.

Many of Brown's books have been re-released with new illustrations decades after their original publication. Many more of her books are still in print with the original illustrations.

Friendly Tales - A Little Golden Book Collection - Margaret Wise Brown