Bill Peet's Countdown To Christmas

If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time, you may remember that I am a big Bill Peet fan. I started collecting his books long before there was an internet, and back before Amazon and eBay, you had to go to your local book store to have them look stuff up for you. Once I had access to the internet, I started buying the Bill Peet books I was missing from my collection. I am not sure how I had totally missed this particular title, but I happened to see the cover of this book on line and I realized immediately that it was by Bill Peet, and that I didn't already own it. A quick visit to eBay and I had a copy of Countdown To Christmas in my hands a few weeks later. My copy comes from the Virginia Beach Public Library System, Kempsville Area Library. The book is from 1972 and is written and illustrated by Bill Peet. It was very enjoyable to have a Bill Peet book to read that was completely new to me. I had read all of his other books so many times as a kid, that this one was unexpected treat.

Goofy and the Tiger Hunt

Here I present one of my all time favorite Disney book covers "Goofy ant eh Tiger Hunt".
After Monday's Little Golden Book post, I decided to pull out this book from the Disney display case in my office. The tiger in the Goliath II book reminded me of the tiger on the cover of this book. In my mind they were identical. Now that I have the Goofy and the Tiger Hunt book in front of me, I see that although they are both tigers, they are not that similar. But, since I had already pulled this book out, and it is one of my favorite Disney items in my collection, I thought I would share it with you today.
This book is from 1954 and is based on the 1945 short "Tiger Trouble". I decided to pull out my Walt Disney Treasures DVD "The Complete Goofy" to watch the Tiger Trouble short, which it turns out is written by Bill Peet, which makes me appreciate this book even more.

Little Golden Book Monday #91

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's Goliath II. I am not sure of the date of the book as the inside front page is missing from the book, but the Goliath II short was released in 1960, so I would guess that this book was released around that time. I usually don't bother purchasing books in such poor shape, but as soon as I took a look at a few of the pages inside, I knew I had to have this one for my collection! The artwork is obviously done by Bill Peet, who just happens to be my absolute favorite children's book writer/artist.
Once I started writing this, I decided I needed to stop at watch the Goliath II short, so I popped some popcorn, and popped in disc 2 of the Walt Disney Treasures "Disney Reties" DVD set. It turns out the short was written by Bill Peet, but after watching the short, I didn't find that the artwork was very Bill Peet like, and since he didn't receive any credit for art, it would seem he didn't have much if anything to do with the artwork for the film. The Little Golden Book version however was obviously drawn by Bill Peet. You can see the obvious similarities to the artwork in his 1959 children's story "Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure" which is the illustration right below (the other two illustrations are from the Goliath II book).
Something I learned from watching the Leonard Maltin introduction to the Disney Rarities disc 2 is that the Goliath II short was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Cartoons, in 1961.
All in all I would say this book was well worth the 10 cents I paid for it at the local thrift shop!

Little Golden Book Monday #64

Today's Little Golden Book, is a pair of books. The original 1957 Sleeping Beauty book along with a 1970 reprint of the book. The 1957 book has "A Little Golden Book" across the top, while the 1970 version has a Golden Book logo at the bottom right.
As I may or may not have said before, I am a huge fan of the Sleeping Beauty film. I think the artwork and look of the film are amazing, and Malicifant is one of my favorite Disney characters. As far as Disney princesses go, Aurora is my favorite, and the soundtrack to the film has some great music.
As a child, my favorite books were by Bill Peet, and years after I had decided that Sleeping Beauty was my favorite Disney film, I found out that Bill Peet had worked on Sleeping Beauty, and now when I look a the film, I can really see his creative style and input.
So, being as Sleeping Beauty is my favorite 'classic' Disney film (my favorite newer Disney film is Atlantis), I love adding anything Sleeping Beauty to my collection. I actually found these two books at the same antique mall, and funny enough the 1970 reissue was $5, while the original 1957 version was only $3.
Other than the covers, the only other real difference is the back cover which has the 1957 version offing Golden Stamp Books, while the 1970 version simply tells us that "More than one billion Golden Books have gone into the homes of children of all nations", and "They are far and away the best-known series of books for young people every published."

Little Golden Book Monday #56

Today's Little Golden Book is The Little Red Caboose from1953. When I found this book, I immediately thought of my favorite book about a caboose called The Caboose Who Got Loose which was written by Bill Peet in 1971.
The story of the Little Red Caboose see the little caboose saving the day when a large train full of cars beings to loose steam going up a mountain the the little caboose puts on its breaks and stops the train from rolling back down the mountain long enough for another large steam engine to come up behind them and push them all safely up the hill.
The Caboose Who Got Loose on the other hand is about Katy Caboose. She is sad that she is always at the end of the train, and nobody ever bothers to wave at her like they do the engines up front. One day, she accidentally becomes detached from her train and ends up rolling out of control until she flies off the tracks and ends up high in a tree. She ends up finding happiness in high in the tree as as she has a wonderful view of the valley, and many of the animals end up using her as a shelter from the weather.

Little Golden Book Monday #46

Tonight's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's The Sword in the Stone. This copy is a second printing from 1973, which was 10 years after the movies 1963 theatrical release.
I have always loved the look of this movie, and one reason may be that Bill Peet worked on it. Bill Peet has always been a favorite writer / artist of mine since my early childhood, reading books such as Capybobby and Farewell to Shady Glade. To this day, my favorite classic Disney animated film is Sleeping Beauty, another film Bill worked on.
This particular copy, has a strange thing going on with its cover... it's peeling. There is a shiny plastic coating on the cover which is peeling up in some areas and missing in others (If you look really carefully at the photo of the cover, you can see what I am talking about). This is the first time I have seen this on a Little Golden book, so not sure if this is a common occurrence on older books or not.
What I have seen on many newer Little Golden Books is the Gold spine sticker/tape starting to come unglued and in some cases, falling off the book.
I would love to find a place to purchase LGB bags/sleeves such as the ones I keep my comic books and records in. If anyone knows of such a thing, please let me know.

Capyboppy

From Amazon.com, an anonymous review of the 1966 Capyboppy book by Bill Peet: "This book was my favorite as a child. Capyboppy is so cute and lovable what child wouldn't like him? Every time we went to the library, I'd beg my dad to check it out and read it to me."
I thought I had written this review until I realized it was my mom, not my dad, that I would beg to check it out for me. I must have taken this book out of the library more than any other book. As a young child, I was enthralled with the story of this large rodent from the Amazon (wow... I used the word Amazon twice in one blog!) jungles becoming the pet of a young boy in a suburban neighborhood. And the drawings, although just black and white pencil drawings, were so captivating! When I got older I started collecting all of Bill Peet's books, and I started with Capyboppy. Most book stores carry a few of Bill Peet's books, but usually just the soft cover variety, so I always special ordered the hard covers for my collection. I have also been lucky enough to be friends with someone at my local library who always lets me know when any Bill Peet books are being discarded, and I am able to add it to my collection. I bough a copy of "Bill Peet, An Autobiography" and was thrilled to see that it was done like one of his childrens books, with large print and filled with those great pencil drawings. It was in this autobiography that I learned that Peet had spent many years working for Disney animation and was responsible for designing many of the characters in Sleeping Beauty which happens to be one of my all time favorite Disney movies.
Some of my other favorite Bill Peet books are; "Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent", "Farewell to Shady Glade", "Fly, Homer Fly" and "Merle the High Flying Squirrel".