A selection of forty-six stories and poems, each with their original illustrations, previously published as separate editions of Little Golden Books.
The present volume was first published as A Treasury of Little Golden Books in 1960 by another western subsidiary, the Golden Press. It was the children's book review editor from the New York Times, Ellen Lewis Buell, who made the selections. In the book's original foreword, Buell expressed her delight at the prospect of giving a "more enduring form" to "certain" Little Golden Books - approximately one in ten of those published - that she herself found memorable and that the children she knew had "read to tatters." How has the Treasury held up since 1960? On the whole, very well. Readers today will surely wince at the caricatured depiction of African tribesmen in an illustration from pets for Peter. Contemporary children will wonder why only the father in Daddies goes off to work. These examples, on view in the pages that follow, are reflections of another time and can and should be discussed. They are the bathwater that comes with the baby - this beaming Treasury, a joyful, time-tested, history-making collection of writing and art for children.