Most of us who are reading this today grew up with Little Golden Books. With their sturdy covers, gold spine, and bright vivid colors, they seized the attention of their intended audience – the child. On top of that, they were perfectly child-sized… just right for the child to read, to cling to, to pore over, to hide under a pillow. They cost a quarter when they first appeared in the dreadful wartime year of 1942. They must have been a comfort in that time of tragedy, dislocation, and terror. Just as they have been ever since.
Rochester’s Memorial Art Galley is now hosting a traveling exhibition, “Golden Legacy: 65 Years of Golden Books.” On Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend we made the trip to see original art from the stories our parents and grandparents read to us, and that we read to our own kids in their turn.
We weren’t the only ones. Plenty of fans were visiting. One of our sons (now in his thirties) came with us. In fact, he insisted on it.
I couldn’t have articulated it, but even as a kid I could tell that some of the Golden Books just had a different air to them. This exhibition made clear how many of the early artists were European, even refugees. But that’s America, incorporating all that comes to it. A Hungarian-born and Hungarian-trained artist like Tibor Gergely can create such American standards as Scuffy the Tugboat and Tootle the Train.
So – here I was, well more than half a century after I first enjoyed them, inches away from Tibor Gergely’s original brushstrokes. And here I got my first surprise, learning that much of the original art – at least that shown here – was created in the same size as the illustration on the printed page.
Comic-strip and comic-book art have traditionally been made larger than the published size, and N.C. Wyeth created huge canvases that became color plates in books. But those early Golden Book artists worked pretty much 1:1, which must have called for meticulous, painstaking labor. Any detail had to be created in its exact tiny published size.
Tibor Gergely was exacting enough in his details to pull off a little joke in an illustration for “Five Little Firemen.” With a caravan of speeding fire vehicles sweeping out from the underpass and up the on-ramp, Gergely added to the city scene a billboard advertising Little Golden Books.
One of the best-selling authors in the history of the world – Richard Scarry – got his start in Golden Books. His take on “Chicken Little” includes a lounging Foxy Loxy, smiling as he watches the parade of panicked victims come to HIM. He doesn’t even need to exert himself, and in the epitome of optimistic opportunism, even dangles salt and pepper shakers from a strap around his neck.
Counterpointing the exuberant, almost cartoon-like “Chicken Little” are four lovely Richard Scarry pieces from “I Am a Bunny.” Each presents one of the seasons – the happy bunny enjoying a beautiful snowfall, sheltering under a toadstool in a gentle spring rain, lolling in a field of summer flowers. In fall the bunny dances in page of falling leaves – just leaves. No background, no scenery, no horizon line. Just the bunny, the leaves, and the fall. It’s my favorite among the Scarry pieces.
Most of us have encountered the work of Alice and Martin Provensen – among other things, they created Tony the Tiger for Kellogg’s. When I was in high school they did the covers for the Washington Square pocket paperback editions of Shakespeare’s plays – something between cubism and Renaissance illumination. They won the Caldecott Medal for most outstanding illustration in children’s books. And they did several Golden Books, including “The Color Kittens.”
I was moved to find their original art of Hush and Brush on their adventures, because I read that book during the Eisenhower years, making my own drawing of it for first-grade open house and showing it to my father. This memory is very vivid because I was thunderstruck by the little fantasy, which seemed to take place in a world right next to ours – rooted, perhaps, in ours, but bringing forth undreamed-of fruit in another. That imaginative leap – that sense that there was more to this world, and more to my life, than met the eye – has underlain my life ever since. Sometimes people are asked to name the most influential books in their lives. After visiting the exhibit I realized that the first such book for me was “The Color Kittens.” I can truly report that a Little Golden Book changed my life.
Most of the artwork, going back to 1942, is in watercolor and/or gouache. But even though we haven’t been closely engaged for the last quarter-century or so, Golden Books continue to thrive and to grow. We got to meet the work of such newer artists as David Diaz (“Ocean’s Child”), with art done on computer – a new departure in a classic series.
There’s much more to the exhibit, including Swedish-born Gustaf Tenggren’s original art on “The Tawny Scrawny Lion” and before-and-after art from Eloise Wilkin (born in Rochester). She updated one of her books to show a world of children that actually reflect the world’s races, and another to make the expectant mother biologically plausible. There are several hundred Golden Books, with comfortable space to sit down and enjoy them – making new friends, and keeping the old. The exhibit runs through January 4; check beforehand for days and hours of operation. And enjoy your trip.