Cheap Little Hardcover Books

The best-known line of small hardcover books for younger readers was The Big Little Book, from Whitman Publishing, Racine, Wisconsin. They launched the series in 1932, and the original books sold for a dime.

They soon morphed into two lines: Better Little Books, which were smaller but thicker, and Big Little Books, which traded thickness for a slightly larger format. Inside, every other page featured a full-page picture to illustrate the facing page of text. The pages were pulp.

These books have always been highly collectible, and there have been several indexes and price guides published to help you keep track.

Dell Publishing was around long before they printed their first Mapback. Launched in 1920, they experimented with various types of pulps and other magazines, including digest-size publications that can be seen in other parts of this website. They got into comic books in 1938, and started printing Disney comics in 1940. The paperback line began in 1942.

This Dell Fast-Action Story book was published in 1936. It measures 4X5 inches (slightly larger than a Better Little Book), and has 240 pulp pages, with every other a full-page picture by Chester Gould. Dell published Dick Tracy comic books.

Blue Ribbon Pop-Up Books were a short-lived series that were printed in the early 1930s in New York. This book was from 1934, and had a single pop-up in the center of the book. It measured 3¾ X 5 inches. Some others in the brief line contained additional pop-ups at the beginning and end.

The winner of the most popular hardcover for children is the Little Golden Book, published by Simon & Schuster, New York. It was not really small, cover-wise (7¾ X 6½), but very thin (about 40 pages), they set the standard for children's literature in the 20th Century. The earliest books had a distinctive gold spine, which turned to silver in the 1950s. They are very collectible. My wife has more than a thousand of these things.