Big Golden Book - Goldencraft Edition

Western Publishing (aka Golden Press, aka Simon and Schuster, aka Dell, etc etc) made a habit of offering their Disney books to schools and libraries with more durable bindings, that could handle more wear and tear than the books would typically encounter in a private home. These special editions were called Goldencraft Editions. Below is the Goldencraft Edition of the first printing of the Alice Big Golden Book.


It has all the first printing points of the standard edition except the gold highlights (not possible because of the special binding) including the floral borders and the A100100. The Goldencraft Editions seem to have been offered throughout the print run of the book, but only the first printings have this nice cover with a vignette of the standard edition cover.

The back cover has this cool logo for the Goldencraft Edition which shows children entering a what is presumably a school. These editions are difficult to come by as they would have only been distributed to schools or libraries, so only via some sort of library sale would these ever see the light of day ... or perhaps someone 'forgot' to return it ... it has been known to happen.

UPDATE: Steve Santi in his excellent reference book on Golden Books identifies this as a Series Three Goldencraft book, which would be the first Goldencraft version available for this title. Series Three bindings were produced from around 1950-1959.

Little Golden Book - Alice Finds the Garden of Live Flowers

Wednesday's post has put me in the mood for a series, so today's post will be #2 in the Garden of Live Flowers LGB series.

Today's post has the US editions. "Plural", you may ask? "I thought you said there was only one printing in the US?" you remind me. Indeed, that is the case, but there are two editions. The standard edition that everyone knows and loves, and the Goldencraft edition, also known as the library or school edition.

There are even variants of the Goldencraft edition, but I'm only posting the one I believe is the earliest edition. Other variants don't have the fully illustrated cover, but have plain text or generic LGB line art. Aside from the binding, the book is identical to the standard edition in every way.

UPDATE: Steve Santi in his excellent reference book on Golden Books identifies this as a Series Three Goldencraft book, which would be the first Goldencraft version available for this title. Series Three bindings were produced from around 1950-1959.

Little Golden Book - Alice in Wonderland Meets the White Rabbit - Goldencraft Edition

Just as with the Live Flowers LGB, the US White Rabbit book has a Goldencraft edition too.

As previously noted, this is a third series Goldencraft binding. These editions were typically used for schools and libraries (given their more durable covers), and are generally difficult to find.

Surprise Package - Happy 4th of July!

Edith, Lorina, and Alice Liddell

Today marks the 235th anniversary of our independence from Britain, but more importantly it also marks the 149th anniversary of the fateful boating trip during which the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson told the story of the little girl Alice following the White Rabbit into Wonderland to Alice Liddell and her sisters.  To commemorate this momentous anniversary I present to you the first publication of an Alice story by the Walt Disney company.

Surprise Package was published by Disney in 1944 as a Giant Golden Book.  It is a compilation of 12 stories that were all in various stages of development at the studio, of which Alice in Wonderland was one.

The book was originally issued with a dust jacket that is rarely found in decent condition. 

The coolest thing about this book though is the illustrations of the Alice story: they are all by David Hall!  I've posted about David Hall before, so I won't go into details here, but all the illustrations were created by Hall in 1939 as part of story development for a proposed Alice feature that got put on hold due to the war.  This was the first time any of these illustrations were released to the public, and they would not see the light of day again until the 1980s when Disney published a full edition of the original Carroll text profusely illustrated with David Hall art.

As with most Golden books of the time, there was also a Goldencraft edition, which was distributed to schools and libraries.  Interestingly, the Goldencraft edition uses a David Hall illustration for the cover.

 

 Surprise Package stayed in print for a number of years; I've seen it in Golden Book catalogs as late as 1953, although the story count by that time had been reduce to 9.

Little Golden Book - Alice und das Weisse Kaninchen - Germany

Ze Germans (thank you Turkish) also published the White Rabbit book - along with the Flowers book - but oddly enough did not publish the Mad Hatter book.

There is even the equivalent of a Goldencraft edition for the German edition.

There is a second printing too, it is a softcover rather than a hardcover.

The publisher of this and all the German Disney books of the period is Blüchert-Verlag. The cover art on all ze German editions is the same, but quite different from the American version.

David Hall Story Art Stills - All Roads Lead to the Mad Hatter

All roads appear to lead to the Mad Hatter, according to this bizarre sign post up ahead (where Rod Serling when you need him).  This watercolor is labeled '96'.

The full watercolor from which the above detail was taken, features Alice pondering which direction she should go, not that it matters.  Signed in the lower left and labeled '96A'.

This image is reproduced in full color in the David Hall book,

And the image is so iconic that not only was it selected for the cover of the Goldencraft edition of Surprise Package,

but decades later it was available from Disney as a fine art giclée.

Little Golden Book - Mad Hatter's Tea Party

I'm finally getting around to posting the series on the last of the Little Golden Books - the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

Based on what we saw in the Golden Catalog in this post, we know that this title was not only published after the other two, but announced after the other two.  As such, it comes as no surprise (at least to me) that there are so few foreign editions of this book as we'll see in the coming days.  Similarly to the Live Flowers book, there was only one printing of this title - at least in this country.  To date I have not been able to locate or even confirm the existence of a Goldencraft edition of this title. 

The art is a little different in this title too.  According to the title page this book was adapted by Richard Kelsey and Don Griffith, and I don't think the art has the charm of the Dempster art in the White Rabbit title.