Photoplay Editions & Movie Tie-Ins
The Golden Years [1912-1969] ... Children's Films

Children’s books are a genre of book collecting that remains popular but movie books in this category are often lacking in substance.  The text can be minimal for early readers, sometimes only presenting a portion of the original novel.  The reverse is also evident with books that are visually attractive to children but require an advanced reader.  Many children’s film books are tied to Walt Disney features and are covered on another website page.

In 1917, J. S. Ogilvie provided a series of four children’s editions that were referred to as Fox Kiddies Features. The booklets are only a few pages long and but long in text with interior stills. These are the earliest film editions for children known. Titles include Jack and the Beanstalk, Treasure Island, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and a retelling of the Hansel and Gretal story titled The Babes in the Woods.  Aladdin has eluded this collector for fifty years.

Children’s movie editions in the 1920s were rather scant, options are to include titles that border on juvenile reading.  A major title of this sort would be the silent film version of The Wizard of Oz (1925).  Oliver Hardy (before pairing with Stan Laurel) plays the Tin Man role.  The Bobbs Merrill reprint has 8 stills and a colorful dust jacket.  This photoplay edition with the jacket is ultra-rare and likely to sell for several thousand dollars if you can find one.  The British equivalent by Hutchinson (2nd printing) only has a mention of the film on the jacket front flap but scarce as well.  There are Grosset & Dunlap and Hodder & Stoughton editions for Peter Pan (1925) by James Barrie that would require an older reader.

Whitman publishing from Racine, Wisconsin in the 1930s flourished with the production of Big Little Books and various booklets that tied into films.  There is a series of eight oversize paperbacks of Shirley Temple films that were big sellers, that remain rather common, as Shirley collectors are on the decline.  These well-illustrated titles are Dimples (1936), The Poor Little Rich Girl (1936), Heidi (1937), Stowaway (1937), Wee Willie Winkie (1937), Little Miss Broadway (1938), The Little Princess (1939), and Susannah and the Mounties (1939).  There are over 100 film editions with Big Little Books and their kin.  Saalfield also published softcover versions of their regular card-covered editions.  Engel van Wiseman published a series of some 30 film editions called the Five Star Library.  Lynn was another primary publisher with some of their output being taller than the usually small editions.  These books are mostly juvenile but some titles were more attractive to children including Alice in Wonderland (1933), Peck’s Bad Boy (1934), Little Red Schoolhouse (1934), Dinky (1935), Dog of Flanders (1935), and Little Big Shot (1935).

Another producer of animated films (besides Walt Disney), is the brother team of Dave and Max Fleischer.  They created the first sound cartoon and brought us cartoon characters such as Betty Boop and Popeye.  Their venture into feature films included Gulliver’s Travels (1939) and Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941).  Gulliver’s Travels is a classic work of fiction by Jonathan Swift and book publishers abridged his novel to the extent that children could read the abbreviated story.  There are no less than 12 movie editions for this film title with the majority being published in London and Sydney.

In the 1940s through the 1960s, the publisher Simon and Schuster dominated children’s books with the introduction of Big and Little Golden Books.  These card cover editions were popular and reprinted into oblivion with some titles.  In general, for Little Golden Books, one has to find the letter “A” on the last page of the text at the bottom near the spine (often having to tweak the spine to see it.  This designates the first printing.  Reprints followed the alphabet with some titles going into double letters.  The first printings of Big Golden Books usually had an “A100A100” inside the front cover bottom left.  Film titles were always Walt Disney productions with the single exception of Tom Thumb (1958)

In the late 1950s, Golden Press reissued most earlier Simon and Schuster titles.  The vast majority of their new film ties were Walt Disney films except for the Little and Big Golden Book editions of Gay Purr-ee (1962).  Rand McNally and Wonder books also provided some children’s film books.  Other examples include Hans Christian Andersen (1952), Heidi and Peter (1952), Misty (1961), The Ten Commandments (1956), and A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969).

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Last Revision:  May 6, 2021 11:15 AM