Identifying and Valuing 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"

Eleven 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.

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 Nineteen Dust Jackets ...

From 1957-to-1970, we have identified nineteen 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-'S'. 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 nineteen 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' (1967-1968) - Since it was used over a number of years, It is quite common to find earlier Beginner Books with this back DJ configuration.

 

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.

 

 

 

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Cliff Erickson of To and Again Books for all his help with first edition identification of Beginner Books. Cliff and his wife Barbara have been long-time children's bookselling specialists, traveling the book fair circuit, selling on the internet, and actively on eBay. We've been regular customers for over a decade and highly recommend them for children's book collectors.

Cliff is an expert in the field and was given acknowledgement for his contribution in both the Santi Little Golden Book Guide along with the Younger/Hirsch Guide To Identification First Editions of Dr. Seuss. Cliff is currently working on a compilation of the first edition identification points for the 'I Can Read' series published by Harper & Brothers. Cliff provided the first edition identification of several of the Beginner Books, provided his expertise for confirmation, the addition of several variants, and also error checking on the entire list.

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© Stan Zielinski
A serious collector having fun with fun books.