Little Golden Books Turn 75

The Poky Little Puppy and 11 other original Little Golden Books are celebrating 75 years of the beloved children’s series in 2017.

Historians site the original price of just 25 cents as the biggest reason for the instant success of the Little Golden Books when they were first published in 1942. At the time, children’s books were primarily available only at libraries and high-end book stores.

“They tended to be very expensive,” Leonard Marcus, author of The Golden Legacy: The Story of the Golden Books told NPR. “So even if you could find one of these books in a store, only a certain percent of the population could afford to bring them home.”

With the mass production of The Little Golden Books, however, children’s books became available everywhere from department stores to grocery stores, where children could easily convince their parents to add a book to the cart. Then, once they were home, the kids could officially claim the book as their own by scrawling their name in the famous “This book belongs to” name plate.

While the price of the books was certainly appealing, the content, including illustrations from former Disney animators and lessons that promoted quality morals, also drew parents to the books with the golden spines. For example, in The Poky Little Puppy, which many consider to hold the title of the best-selling hardcover children’s book of all-time, the main puppy learns that it’s only a matter of time before poor choices lead to serious consequences (like “NO DESSERTS EVER”).

While perhaps not as popular as they once were, Little Golden Books like Scuffy the Tugboat and Tawny Scrawny Lion are still in production. The books are currently published by Penguin Random House.