"The Pokey Little Puppy" or <br><i>Why Golden Books are Still Golden</i>

I grew up with a shelf full of Little Golden Books in my house—they were inexpensive and fairly sturdy and my parents must have gradually acquired quite a few. Just about all of those have bit the dust by now, though I still cling to a worn out coverless copy of The Bouncy Baby Bunny Finds a Bed by Joan Bowden and Christine Westerberg.

According to my mother this book was the worst thing ever written down. Mostly because for a time it was my absolute favorite book to he ar and it’s a long book with lots of words on every page. I freely admit to being a read-aloud tyrant. I wanted the book I wanted and I knew every word so my mother had better not try to skip pages or sentences! As an adult I pulled out the book and found it just so-so, but I still hold onto it for nostalgia’s sake. Now I’m sure a large number of Golden Books were less than stellar books, but there are some out there that have remained great stories over the years, and I’m rediscovering them with my son.

My son’s favorite book these days --next to Where the Wild Things Are -- is The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey and Gustaf Tenggren. Reading it to him the first time was like hearing my mother read it to me once more—her voice echoing in my head as I read it. It’s a simple book about five naughty puppies who keep digging holes under the fence and how they lose out on dessert because of their behavior until they learn their lesson.

Of course the Poky little puppy makes out like a bandit until the other four puppies learn that lesson. What makes this book work so well is the repeated lines that fall easily from the tongue. For instance, these books contain one of the best descriptions of the movement of a group of puppies ever. “So down they went to see. Roly-poly, pell-mell, tumble-bumble, till they came to the green grass and there they stopped short.” My nearly 2 yr old son will sit patiently on our laps through this whole story, and we often can’t escape a day when both of us don’t read it to him at least once.

Unlike some Golden Books which have been forgotten with time and never seen the light of republishing (like my own notorious favorite), this book has gone on to be reprinted time and time again. In fact, I was in the grocery store the other day, only to discover a whole rack of Golden Books, including The Poky Little Puppy.

It’s easy today to overlook some of these books—there are so many fantastic picture books out there to be read and viewed and absorbed. But some of these are little gems, nuggets of gold in the stream of debris. And while they might not be able to compete full on with the artistry of many modern picture books, they’re still worthwhile to have and share with the next generation.

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