Remembering Big Little Books

 

In my last post ,while doing a  little reminiscing about Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon , I was reintroduced to a long lost friend, BIG LITTLE BOOKS. To quote from the link, " The Whitman BLBs look much like a four-inch block sawed off the end of a two-by-four. Although there were numerous variations in outside dimensions and in number of pages, most were 3 5/8" x 4 1/2" x 1 1/2" in size and 432 pages in length. The outstanding feature of the books was the captioned picture opposite each page of text. The books originally sold for a dime (later 15¢). Many children learned to read and have an appreciation for all books because of their experiences with BLBs. The source material for the books was drawn mostly from radio, comic strips, and motion pictures."

If memory serves me correctly, BLBs were the first books I ever owned. At a dime apiece they were a bargain even in the days of the Great Depression and I was blessed to have parents willing to part with a dime to provide me with a book . As mentioned in the conclusion above, BLBs played an important role in my developing an appreciation for books. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I compare it to a child's experience with computers and the internet today.

I would be remiss if I did not give due credit to public libraries for their role in developing an appreciation for books in my early youth. I still remember story book time on Saturday mornings at the local library.

My biggest regret? I did not save my Big Little Books!  That's what happens when you have enough money to buy big books.