The Big Little Books were small, compact books designed with
an illustration opposite each page of text. First published during 1932 by the
Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin, Big Little Books were
typically 3⅝″ wide and 4½″ high, and approximately of 1½″ thick. The interior
book design usually displayed full-page black-and-white captioned illustrations
on the right-hand page, facing the pages of text on the left. The first Big Little Books, The Adventures of
Dick Tracy, came off the presses just before Christmas in 1932 and preceded the
first true comic book by a year. Rapid sales of the books through the
five-and-dime chains led to the quick creation of other titles. The books were
produced at a rate of about six titles per month. Initially priced at 10¢ each,
Big
Little Books were related to
radio programs, children's books, novels, movies, and, as is the case with the
example shown above, comic strips. Subsequent Big Little Books production spanned more than a half century.
Gasoline Alley, a comic strip created by Frank King, was
first published November 24, 1918. The strip received critical accolades for
its influential innovations, inventive color and page design concepts, and the
introduction of real-time continuity to comic strips. One notable example of
this was the arrival of baby Skeezix on February 14, 1921, when main character
Walt Wallet found a baby abandoned on his doorstep. That was the day Gasoline
Alley entered history as the first comic strip in which the characters aged
normally. As such, when this Big Little Book was published in 1938 by Whitman
Publishing, “baby” Skeezix was now old enough to attend the military academy! Mid-1938
brought an end to the “golden Age” of Big Little Books, with Whitman changing
their copyrighted logos to Better Little Books, so this edition would have been
one of the last, true “Big Little Books”.
