2 Big Golden Books

2 gorgeous Big Golden books for you today, illustrated by Garth Williams and Feodor Rojankovsky.  Both of these books were published in the early 1950's.  I especially like the horse picture.  When I was growing up my grandparents had Arabian horses.  I read all kinds of horse books and now my 7 year old is starting to do the same. We're getting ready for back-to-school here this weekend.  It has been a nice summer.  A lot cooler here than the previous few summers.  My oldest is starting grade 3 and my 3 year old will be going to preschool a few mornings a week.  

Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Little Golden Book

Fiiinally taking a quick break from tending to my new baby and gazing out at too much snow with a new post for you. Enjoy this collection of some of the best illustrations from Little Golden Books over the years.  Little Goldens really are the best. The pictures are selected from stories such as Tootle, The Three Bears, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, The Musicians of Bremen, Baby's First Book, Nurse Nancy, Pantaloon, Open Up My Suitcase, A Day on the Farm, The Color Kittens, The Tawny Scrawny Lion, The Little Red Hen, and Little Boy With a Big Horn.

Doctor Dan, Numbers, and Mister Dog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doctor Dan the Bandage Man is illustrated by Corinne Malvern - love her.  Numbers is  illustrated by Violet LaMont, best known for her work on Little Black Sambo.  Mister Dog is brought to us by the well-known Margaret Wise Brown (writer of Goodnight Moon, etc) and illustrator Garth Williams (Little House on the Prairie, Charlotte's Web, etc.)  This book is so original, it makes me laugh - 'the dog who belonged to himself', 'Crispin's Crispian', the image of the dog in the housecoat making himself breakfast, etc.  

2 Garth Williams books

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rambling story for you -So this summer my 5-year-old had the idea that she wanted to have a Book Club/Reading Club with her friends.  So funny because I had actually had the same idea a couple weeks before, but had not mentioned it to her.  So we had 4 of her friends over - we read all of the Mo Willems books out loud, did some Pigeon activity pages, made Pigeon hats, had a special snack, and just played for a while.  Very fun, we'll try to do it a few times through the year with different authors or themes I think.  Anyway part of the Book Club playdate was also that we asked her friends to bring some books that they were done with, and my daughter Keira and I would gather them all together and take them somewhere to donate.  I did some research and found a wonderful charity set up by 2 young teenagers - they decided to start asking for donations of children's books to fly up to a First Nations reserve where they just don't have very many resources.  Amazing that they are doing this! Anyhoo, all this to say that we drove to the mall where there is a special drop-off spot to donate these books - but then we found a used bookstore in the same mall- sooo we ended up quickly re-filling our bookshelf space with more books to replace the ones that we gave away!  LOL.  I was excited to see a big pile of Little Golden Books at this store and these were a few of the ones we bought.  Garth Williams' drawings are so sweet - he illustrated about 97 books, and about a dozen were Golden Books.  Here we have Animals' ABC and Home for a Bunny.

A Baby Sister For Frances/Bedtime for Frances - by Russell Hoban

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I love these books - the antics of Frances remind me of my own little girl, and of course I love making up silly little tunes for the songs that Frances sings to herself in the book as I am reading the book aloud to my daughter.  Russell Hoban, the author, actually died just last year.  Besides children's books, he was also known for writing fantasy, science fiction, and poetry.  Other Frances books include Bread and Jam for Frances, A Birthday for Frances, Best Friends for Frances, and A Bargain for Frances.  You will notice that his wife, Lillian Hoban, illustrated the first of these books posted here, while Garth Williams (I tend to remember him most for his illustrations of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web) illustrated the other. 

Linking to The Children's Bookshelf