A Little Golden Book Series (8 books)

Cinderella: 1950 This World of Ours: 1959 Donald Duck's Toy Sailboat: 1954 Baby's First Book: 1955 Donald Duck, Lost adn Found: 1960 The Three Little Pigs: 1933 Seven Dwarfs Find a House: 1952 Mother Goose: 1952 Little Golden Books was the brainchild of Georges Duplaix, who in 1940 was head of Artists and Writers Guild Inc., a division of Western Publishing tasked with developing new children's books. Meanwhile, a shared printing plant led Western and Simon & Schuster to develop a close relationship. In 1938, the first joint effort between Western and Simon & Schuster, A Children’s History, was published. Duplaix had the idea to produce a colorful, more durable and affordable children’s book than those being published at that time which sold for $2 to $3. With the help of Lucile Olge, also working at the Guild, Duplaix contacted Albert Leventhal, a vice president and sales manager at Simon & Schuster, and Leon Shimkin, also at Simon & Schuster, with his idea. The group decided to publish twelve titles for simultaneous release in what was to be called the Little Golden Books Series. Each book would have 42 pages, 28 printed in two-color, and 14 in four-color. The books would be staple-bound. The group originally discussed a 50-cent price for the books, but Western did not want to compete with other 50-cent books already on the market. The group calculated that if the print run for each title was 50,000 copies instead of 25,000, the books could affordably be sold for 25 cents each. Mary Reed, Ph.D., a professor at the Teachers College, Columbia University, served as initial editor of the series.