BIG LITTLE BOOKS: A CHILDHOOD TREASURE by Vonn McKee

Since I'm traveling this week, I hope you won't mind reading (or rereading) this post about Big Little Books, which first appeared a couple of years ago. I'll meet you all in May (fourth Sunday) for a fresh new blog post here at Western Fictioneers!
 
All the best,
VM

It’s possible that this book, Roy Rogers and the Mystery of the Howling Mesa, is the first western I ever read. It once sat on a crowded book shelf in one of the cozy, garret bedrooms of my grandparents' farmhouse in northwestern Minnesota, where I visited every summer of my childhood. I snuggled under handmade quilts at night, surrounded by the rag rugs, books and simple toys left from my father’s childhood days.

It’s just a little book … a Big Little Book, in fact. It’s chubby, about 4 inches square by an inch and a half thick, with a tough little hardboard cover. There were others on hand–Dick Tracy, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse–and they were just the right length to read before nodding off.

Big Little Books were most popular during the 1930s and ‘40s. They actually came about through a series of mishaps. A young man named E.H. Wadewitz went to work for a commercial printer in Racine, Wisconsin, in order to pay for his evening bookkeeping classes (which would come in handy later). The company wasn’t doing so well and fell behind on his pay. (Mishap Number One) Finally the desperate owner offered Wadewitz ownership of the company, negotiating the back pay as part of the purchase price. He accepted and found himself in the printing business, complete with a couple of battered presses, some worn type fonts and a band-powered cutting machine.
Wadewitz christened the company “Western Printing and Lithographing.” He brought his brother onboard and they hired an experienced local printer and eventually a salesman. One of their early clients was Hammerung-Whitman, a publisher of children’s books. Western contracted to print thousands of their newly developed titles but, after the books were printed, Hammerung-Whitman defaulted on payment. (Mishap Number Two)

Western Printing Company, early days
(E.H.Wadewitz second from right)

The Wadewitz brothers had a warehouse full of children’s books and no retail experience. They decided to try selling all the books rather than writing off the cost and, over the next three years, managed to place all the inventory in various department stores.

By now, they were getting the hang of it and contracted with a major five-and-dime chain called S.S. Kresge to provide children’s titles. A miscommunication within the fulfillment department led to Mishap Number Three: Western printed TWELVE times too many books for the Kresge order! Their salesman, Sam Lowe, took a gamble. He persuaded the F.W. Woolworth Company to display the books in their stores, even though it wasn’t Christmas. (At that time, children’s books were only available for Christmas gift-giving.) Sales were brisk and Western Printing scrambled to provide more titles, even branching into boxed board games and puzzles.

With the Great Depression, the public turned to inexpensive forms of entertainment. They flocked to ten-cent movie matinees, gathered around RCA Victors to listen to free radio dramas, and bought cheap comics and pulp fiction based on popular Hollywood characters.

Western Printing hit upon the idea of providing licensed children’s books that featured the radio and cinema heroes the public loved so well. Salesman Sam Lowe designed the “Big Little Book,” a compact, chunky hardboard book, to suit the hands of small readers. After pitching the idea to some New York retailers, he walked away with orders for 25,000 books. Soon, Western had an exclusive licensing deal with Walt Disney to print books based on their cartoon characters. Some of those first edition Disney books are worth thousands of dollars today! Other titles featured Buck Rogers, Blondie & Dagwood and tons of cowboys including Tom Mix, Red Ryder, Gene Autry and Ken Maynard.

A few BIG LITTLE BOOK Western titles

Roy Rogers and the Mystery of the Howling Mesa now sits on a shelf at my mom’s house. (My dad passed away last year.) She says I’m welcome to take it home with me but, for now, I’m letting it stay there with the rest of his mementoes. Someday, I’ll read it again…just so I can say I’ve come full circle.

All the best,

Vonn

 Vonn McKee
"Writing the Range"

2015 Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Finalist (Short Fiction)
2015 Western Writers of America Spur Finalist (Short Fiction)



Facebook.com/VonnMcKee

‘A Horse for Henry’ — Kaye Spencer’s memories of a treasured childhood book



When I was eight or nine years old, my parents gave me a hardback book called A Horse for Henry. At that age, I identified with the main character, Henry, because he wanted his own horse more than anything in the whole wide world, and so did I. What my parents wanted me to take away from this story was the theme of responsibility and that certain privileges had to be earned by demonstrating responsible behaviors.

Somewhere in the process of growing up, I not only forgot about the book but, as Kris Kristofferson wrote, I lost it somewhere, somehow along the way. So, a couple of years ago, I decided to search for it. Patience and time paid off, because I located three paperback copies, which I have tucked away, hopefully to share someday with an interested grandchild.



You’ll notice the author’s name is not on the cover (or anywhere else in the book), which makes me sad. The inside cover has a little bit of information about the book. The publisher was Whitman Publishing Company in Racine, Wisconsin, and the Roman numerals translate to a 1952 copyright date. The illustrations certainly pigeonhole the book as classic 1950s and early 1960s style, but they also bring up fond reading memories since I am of the generation who learned to read with Dick, Jane, and Sally and “See Spot run”, which share the same type of illustrations.

A Horse for Henry goes like this…

 

What Henry wants most is a black colt named Shine, but he hasn’t shown that he’s dependable enough to take care of a horse. He leaves a saddle out in the rain. He forgets to load the salt in the chuck wagon. He leaves the corral gate open, and the horses get out. His dad tells him, “Son, when you can do a man’s work and do it right, you can have a horse.”

Just when it looks like Henry will always have to ride the family’s pet mule and never get a horse of his own, through some quick thinking on his part, he saves his little brother (and himself) from a cougar.



The next morning, Henry wakes to find Shine tied outside his window, and his dad says, “You’re a man now, Henry, and a man can’t get along very well without a horse of his own.”

From my adult’s perspective, I look back on the popularity of the traditional western novels, western television shows and movies, and perhaps even some of the country music during the era when A Horse for Henry was published, and I see this story as a post-WWII children’s slant on the Old West theme of “what makes a man a man”.

This story, and its message, has stayed with me all these years and, every time I reread it, I remember why.

 * * * *

Just for fun, here I am with my first horse, a Welsh pony named Corky. In the left-hand picture, I was riding in the Howdy Days Parade in Fort Morgan, Colorado in August 1964. The right-hand picture was at the Morgan County Fair in Brush, Colorado in August 1965 (4-H).

Until next time,

Kaye
Fall in love…faster, harder, deeper with Kaye Spencer romances
www.kayespencer.com
Twitter - @kayespencer