Collecting Childrens Picturebooks

Background

Similar to a couple of years ago, we recently performed an internet search for the first editions of the first twenty Caldecott Medal books, wondering how many are currently being offered for sale. The searches were performed across multiple book sites, ABE, ABAA, and Bookfinder, and were filtered for first edition books with dust jackets.

Across the twenty Medal winning books, there are thirty-five first edition books currently for sale, with an average asking price of $822. In our survey we did not adjust the asking price to the condition of the book being offered, so the average price should be used judiciously.

Six Books Found

There were six copies of the 1954 Caldecott Medal winner Madeline's Rescue on the market, the highest quantity for sale across the respective sample set. The average asking price is a healthy $748, indicative of the high desirability of this second book in the iconic Ludwig Bemelmans' series. Madeline the first book in the series, was published in 1939 and earned a Caldecott Honor award (there is only one first edition copy currently on the market, offered for $4000). Madeline is a 'tough get' in first edition with dust jacket.

Some Other Books Found

The Little Island, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, is another tough find, in part due to authorship by Margaret Wise Brown, under the pseudonym 'Golden Macdonald'. Books authored by Brown have an avid collectible following, with The Little Island being the eighth book she wrote under the Macdonald pseudonym. Brown wrote her ninth, and last book as 'Golden Macdonald' some ten years later, in 1956, Whistle For The Train. While Weisgard illustrated hundreds of children's books, his work in The Little Island earned his only Caldecott Medal.

There was one copy of Frog Went A-Courtin, on the market offered for $1250. Illustrated by Feodar Rojankovsky and written by John Langstaff, Frog Went A-Courtin is the first of two books by the pair, who colloborated on Over In The Meadow in 1957.

Six Books Not Found

Six of the twenty books are not currently being offered for sale on the internet. Understandably it would be a seller's market for any of these books in first edition format with dust jacket. As was expected, Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House and Robert McCloskey’s Make Way For Ducklings are not currently available. First editions in dust jacket for either book do not surface for sale very often. Since 2000, we have seen only one first edition copy of The Little House for sale (Sigh…regrets abound), and one copy of Make Way For Ducklings for sale.

Similar to when we performed this survey two years ago, there are no first edition copies of White Snow, Bright Snow, Cinderella, and Finders Keepers, currently for sale in the market. These three books are not as scarce as The Little House or Make Way For Ducklings so one would think the demand would eventually cause first edition copies to surface. It is somewhat surprising to see no first edition copies of The Egg Tree on the market. Katherine Milhous' Easter homage to her Pennsylvania Quaker heritage is not too scarce.

Stan Zielinski, co-author of the Children's Picturebook Price Guide, is a serious collector having fun with fun books.

Links Are Our Friends

The information offered on the website and blog is offered free of charge. If you find the information useful, then kindly link or share the post with a parent, teacher, librarian, bookseller, or collector. Thank You.

Posted by Stan Zielinski at 09:09 AM | Permalink

Digg this!!

[This is the third of three posts helping with the first edition identification of the first 55 Beginner Books, starting with the 1957 publication of The Cat In the Hat through the books published in 1970. Each of these books was originally issued with a dust jacket.]

Identifying First Edition Beginner Books

From the table above, we provide you the table below, which summarizes the first edition identification points for the first fifty-five Beginner Books. Soon to come, links with photos for each of the Beginner Books in the table.

Stan Zielinski, co-author of the Children's Picturebook Price Guide, is a serious collector having fun with fun books.

Links Are Our Friends

The information offered on the website and blog is offered free of charge. If you find the information useful, then kindly link or share the post with a parent, teacher, librarian, bookseller, or collector. Thank You.

Posted by Stan Zielinski at 03:44 PM | Permalink

Digg this!!

[This is the second of three posts helping with the first edition identification of the first 55 Beginner Books, starting with the 1957 publication of The Cat In the Hat through the books published in 1970. Each of these books was originally issued with a dust jacket.]

Identifying First Edition Beginner Books With Correct Dust Jacket Listing

What complicates the first edition identification of Beginner Books is that a chronological listing of the titles in the series has been difficult to attain. We compiled the following table to help rectify this issue - it lists the fifty-five Beginner Books produced through 1970 in chronological order.

With the exception of The Cat In The Hat, the first printing of each of these has a dust jacket price of $1.95. The price will be printed on the front dust jacket flap either in the form “195/195” or “$1.95”.

The Eighteen Dust Jackets ...

From 1957-to-1970, we have identified eighteen different Beginner Book dust jacket back covers, and have listed them chronologically in the table below. To help with the discussion, these dust jackets have been enumerated 'A'-to-'R'. From this table, we can reference a particular dust jacket to help identify first editions (see table, below).

For those with a value system inclined toward pictures rather than words, you can always visit our web page with images and links to each of eighteen dust jackets.

Some points to note:

• DJ 'A' (1957) - Only used on the The Cat In The Hat, the first book in the series.
• DJ 'B' (1958) - Used on the first six books in the series. It is not uncommon to find copies of The Cat In The Hat with the listing of six books on the back DJ.
• DJ 'C' (1959) - Not common. One does not often come across The Cat In The Hat or the other six books in the series with this particular back DJ.
• DJ 'D' (1959) - Lists twelve books in the series, is the more common of the two DJ's used in 1959.
• DJ 'F' (1960) - We have identified three variants with this configuration of listing 18 books in the series. Five first edition Beginner Books have this back DJ title list configuration.
• DJ 'G' (1961) - Not common, used in early 1961, and much scarcer than the type 'H' dust jacket used later that same year. Both of the first edition Beginner Books with this title list configuration are quite difficult to come across (BB-19 Ten Apples Up On Top! and BB-20 Go, Dog, Go!).
• DJ 'H' (1961) - Quite common to find the earlier Beginner Books with this DJ configuration listing 24 titles. Speculating ..., 1961 is the first full year with Beginner Books operating as a Division of Random House, and potentially could mean an increase in production quantities. The four first edition Beginner Books published in this era are not too uncommon.

Continuing, some points to note:

• DJ 'I' (1962) - BB-25, Robert The Red Horse, is the only first edition Beginner Book with a back DJ title list configured with 25 books.
• DJ 'J' (1962) - It's not uncommon to find earlier Beginner Books with this 28 title list configuration.
  BB-28, The Big Honey Hunt, is the first book in the Berenstain Bears franchise, now over 200 books strong, and is moderately difficult 'get'. Given the phenomenal publishing success of the franchise, first editions of the first book in the series should be in demand for decades to come.
• DJ 'L' (1963) - It's not uncommon to find earlier Beginner Books with this 33 title list configuration.
• DJ 'M' (1964) - Back DJ advertises The Cat In The Hat Beginner Book Dictionary and was used throughout 1964. BB-36, The Bike Lesson, is the second book in the Berenstain Bears franchise.
• DJ 'N' (1965) - BB-37, Fox In Socks, is the only first edition Beginner Book with a back DJ title list configured with these 37 books. This is the last titles listing which is comprehensive, as later back DJ title list configurations omitted some books.
• DJ 'P' (1965) - The back DJ lists through BB-40, however only has 37 titles listed, omitting three. The three titles excluded are BB-4 The Big Jump and other Stories, BB-5 Big Ball of String, and BB-12 Ann Can Fly. It is unclear whether these three books were taken out of publication, or whether their title was simply excluded from the list. Although three new Beginner Books were introduced in 1965 (BB-38 Fox In Socks, BB-39 The King, The Mice, and The Cheese, and BB-40 I Wish That I Had Duck Feet), none of the first editions have this back title configuration. Another peculiarity of this back title configuration is the spelling of Fox In Socks, understandedly misspelled Fox In Sox.
• DJ 'Q' (1966) - The back DJ lists through BB-44, however only has 41 titles listed, omitting three. The three titles excluded are BB-4 The Big Jump and other Stories, BB-5 Big Ball of String, and BB-12 Ann Can Fly.
• DJ 'R' (1967-1970) - Since it was used over a number of years, It is quite common to find earlier Beginner Books with this back DJ configuration.

 Continued in Part 3, "First Edition Beginner Books"

Stan Zielinski, co-author of the Children's Picturebook Price Guide, is a serious collector having fun with fun books.

Links Are Our Friends

The information offered on the website and blog is offered free of charge. If you find the information useful, then kindly link or share the post with a parent, teacher, librarian, bookseller, or collector. Thank You.

Posted by Stan Zielinski at 08:42 AM | Permalink

Digg this!!

[This is the first of three posts helping with the first edition identification of the first 55 Beginner Books, starting with the 1957 publication of The Cat In the Hat through the books published in 1970. Each of these books was originally issued with a dust jacket.] 

Identifying First Edition Beginner Books

Within the hobby, to our knowledge, a method for identifying first printings of Beginner Books has not yet been published. Several of the high dollar Beginner Books have well documented first edition identification points, notably the Seuss illustrated and/or authored books via the Younger/Hirsch Guide to Identification. Identification points for the other books in the series have not been well documented so those who stumble upon a dust jacketed Beginner Book resort to some amount of sleuthing.

Book sleuthing, although not usually replete with pain and anguish, does involve a fair use of time and labor looking through folders accumulated with years of unkempt notes, probing the internet, auction logs, and perhaps phone calls or emails to carefully culled sources. Sadly, even the most ardent of sleuthing does not always lead to a successful conclusion, especially with such as Beginner Books, being neither extremely valuable nor widely regarded as highly collectible, the Seuss books of course being the exception.

This is good news to us, the 'nor widely regarded as highly collectible', since we understand the importance of the Beginner Book series in sculpting the definition of the 'early reader' and its subsequent publishing success over the past 40-some years. For more on the history and importance of Beginner Books, please see our webpage on collecting Beginner Books.

Beginner Books, With Dust Jackets

The scope of our research encompasses the Beginner Books issued originally with dust jackets, so spanning from 1957-to-1972. Children being what children be, most of the original dust jackets perished or became very diminished in nature soon after purchase. Dust be to dust. Because of this, even non-first, but early printings in a nice dust jacket are to be prized, with first editions difficult to come by. In most cases, the DJ information is key to correctly identifying a first edition Beginner Book, therefore, sans jacket, there is little collector interest. The exceptions are books with 'First Printing' on the copyright page, which will have collector interest, and are listed below.

The first Beginner Book, The Cat In The Hat, published in March 1957 originally sold for $2.00 ('200/200' on front top right DJ flap), but the price was reduced in late-1957/early-1958 to $1.95 ('195/195' on front top right DJ flap). From 1958 to 1972 Beginner Books remained at a selling price of $1.95. Random House raised the price to $2.50 in 1972. In only a couple of instances is the price on the DJ necessary to identify a first edition Beginner Book.

Identifying Beginner Books First Editions

There are three primary means to identify first edition Beginner Books:

1. Stated 'First Printing' on the the copyright page.
2. A dust jacket unique to the first printing.
3. A dust jacket with the correct sequence of Beginner Books.

Stated “First Printing”

Fourteen books have “First Printing” stated on the copyright page. Please see the following table for the listing of the books.

It is important to note that in all cases of these fourteen books, the true first printings will state “First Printing”, are published by Beginner Books AND are distributed by Random House. Later printings will be published by Beginner Books, a division of Random House. To clear up this mystery...

“Distributed By” Versus “Division Of”

Prior to 1960, Beginner Books existed as an independent publishing company, and the books were distributed by Random House. In 1960, Beginner Books was sold to Random House and became a division of the company.

The true first printings of the first seventeen books will have “Distributed by Random House” on the book and dust jacket in addition to the other identifying points enumerated in the table. Later printings of these books will have a “Division of Random House” on the book and/or the dust jacket.

This point is crucial to identifying true first printings of the first seventeen Beginner Books, since Random House did print “First Printing” on the copyright page of several of the books after the transaction. In these instances, the book is a first Random House printing, although not a first printing in the collector sense of the phrase.

For example, we have two copies of Beginner Book B-9, The Whales Go By, each stating ‘First Printing”, on the copyright page, and indicating copyright 1959. However, in the first copy, which is the true first printing, the back dust jacket lists only twelve books, from The Cat In The Hat (1957) to Book of Laughs (1959). This book is printed by Beginner Books, Inc, and distributed by Random House. The second copy, also stating ‘First Printing’ on the copyright page, lists books from The Cat In The Hat to Are You My Mother? (1960). This book is published by Beginner Books, a division of Random House, and is therefore not a true first printing.

It’s really not too complicated:
Beginner Books which state ‘First Printing’ on the copyright page and are also distributed by Random House, are the true first printing of the book.

Beginner Books With Unique Dust Jacket

Three first edition Beginner Books have dust jackets that were not used on any other books in the series. The dust jackets were unique to the first edition book. 

The early printings of The Cat In The Hat, the first Beginner Book, has a unique back dust jacket which was not used on other books in the series. The first edition The Cat In The Hat can be identified by the '200/200' price ($2.00) on the front dust jacket flap.

The two other books with 'unique' dust jacket backs are Hop On Pop, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. While the back dust jacket of most Beginner Books listed the other books in the series, the dust jacket backs for these two books contains reviews of the particular book.

For Hop On Pop, the top of the dusk jacket back states “About HOP ON POP, educators say:” followed by five reviews.

For One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, the top of the dusk jacket back states “EXPERTS IN THE READING FIELD ACCLAIM”, followed by three reviews.

For both Hop On Pop and One Fish, these unique review backs were only used on the first printings. Without the dust jacket, it is not possible to identify a true first edition of either book.

Continued in Part 2, "Identifying First Edition Beginner Books With Correct Dust Jacket Listing".

Stan Zielinski, co-author of the Children's Picturebook Price Guide, is a serious collector having fun with fun books.

Links Are Our Friends

The information offered on the website and blog is offered free of charge. If you find the information useful, then kindly link or share the post with a parent, teacher, librarian, bookseller, or collector. Thank You.

Posted by Stan Zielinski at 06:29 PM | Permalink

Digg this!!

By nature not an overreactor, but fearing for the lead-free life of my children, their children, and children in near and far locales, including Eastville in southwestern North Dakota, decided to part with my five thousand or so collectible children's book collection. The value of the collection, the vast majority first editions, some rare, some unique, with fifty pieces of original artwork - paintings, sketches, watercolors - pales in comparison to the risk of a child, in some distant future, ingesting any of the works as lunch. Lamenting the absence of even a single certificate attesting to the lead-free status of one of the books, I curse the publishing houses of year's past with their backward looking ways. Couldn't they have foreseen the rise of China and spontaneous outbreak of lead dastardly embedded in our children's products? It would have been so obvious fifty years ago, clear as forecasting tomorrow's stock market.

I was perplexed for days thinking of a surefire method to rid the earth of this unwanted horde. The objective was zero risk of a first edition Cat In The Hat ever becoming a baby's teething blanket, since the collection might be disbursed upon my death or dismemberment. Or sale, god forbid. My aroused conscious led to months of sleepless nights anticipating the ban on selling of children's books on eBay, Amazon, and the like. So proactively ridding myself of the demon host of books will release the inner anxieties worrying about the infallible Pope-like decisions from the intelligent and very clued-in managers of aforementioned entities, who are certain to follow the letter of the law. No, the method of destruction must be total, not just minimizing the risk of one of my first editions becoming some child's breakfast, but iron-clad zero tolerance, similar to how effectively corporate policy prevents the viewing of pornography on one's work computer.

Securing space on a rocket ship is no small endeavor. For one, the charges are in large part calculated by weight. Five thousand children's books weigh more than a mouse, but less than a house. The relative neighborhood is four tons, somewhere north of eight thousand pounds, so mucho dineros to lift the load into the heavens. Second, most of the dad-blasted rocket blasting services send the payload up and orbit the earth, not exit earth's orbit. For goodness sake, what good is that? Having my collection orbiting the earth for perpetuity was far too risky. Why, what if space travel becomes common place in a couple of hundred years? Easily, some 7-year old could start munching on a Maurice Sendak first edition while reading a Tomi Ungerer. Had to be iron-clad, zero tolerance, rid the earth. Costs be damned.

Eventually I scheduled and commissioned an earth-orbit exiting rocketship to take this non-certificated potentially lead-laden payload of death into the bowels of the Sun. Good ol' Sol never let anyone down, been burning for millions of years. Hot too, to the tune of twenty-seven million degrees Fahrenheit. That will roast a wiener or two, and burn like hell the condemned. No trial was necessary, the books a victim of their certifiableless past.

No regrets while watching the rocket leave the launch pad then into the high atmosphere of the sky before disappearing from sight. Only relief that justice had indeed been served, children saved, my soul redeemed. And much thankfulness for the Solomon-like wisdom written into the Public Law 110-314, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

For more on how 'CPSIA of 2008' impacts bookselling, please see Bookshop Blog.

Stan Zielinski, co-author of the Children's Picturebook Price Guide, is a serious collector having fun with fun books.

Links Are Our Friends

The information offered on the website and blog is offered free of charge. If you find the information useful, then kindly link or share the post with a parent, teacher, librarian, bookseller, or collector. Thank You.

Posted by Stan Zielinski at 05:45 PM | Permalink

Digg this!!