Golden Legacy: how Golden Books won children's hearts, changed publishing forever, and became an American icon along the way by Leonard S. Marcus

Fri, 03/10/2017 - 4:30pm -- JGranatino

Mention the name of a familiar Golden Book – The Pokey Little PuppyScuffy the Tugboat or Five Little Firemen – to a Baby Boomer and it may evoke surprisingly misty-eyed and sentimental reminiscences of a particular favorite. Author Marcus notes that these inexpensive books, which were often sold in supermarkets for as little as twenty-five cents, brought children’s literature to the masses. The publisher assembled some of the finest illustrators of the time, making these familiar books “in which we scrawled our names, with the cardboard cover and the shiny gold-foil spines” visually memorable to their readers. In this book, he traces the history of Golden Books and its major figures from 1942 through the 1970’s, interviews contemporary authors and illustrators who were influenced by them, and offers many reproductions of familiar cover art and images. 75 years after its founding, Golden Books most beloved titles continue to be produced by Penguin Random House.

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