Gustaf Tenggren and the Genesis of the Golden Book Style

Just about all of us grew up with Little Golden Books. Some of the world's greatest illustrators worked for Western Publishing on the series- Feodor Rojankovsky, Mary Blair, Mel Crawford, Eloise Wilkin, Tibor Gergely, Richard Scarry and Alice & Martin Provensen, among others. But none were more responsible for the way the books looked than Gustaf Tenggren. Today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, I've posted a massive illustrated article on a seminal book in Tenggren's career- "The Tenggren Tell It Again Book". In this book, Tenggren took elements from contemporary illustrators and merged them with his own Swedish folk heritage to create what went on to become the Golden Book style. Fantastic stuff!

Gustaf Tenggren and the Genesis of the Golden Book Style

• [Anonymous]

  I love Scarry, Herge, and Toriyama for a lot of the same reasons.

• [Rich Keller]

  Tenggren’s illustrations have a “Moderne” streamlined quality that he combined with a traditional Old World lushness that evokes the same feeling I get when I see a George Pal Puppetoon.

• [Anonymous]

  Though they put so much attention into the visual artistry, looking back it seems the stories were pretty thin. As a parent, I can hardly get through them. There’s not a whole lot of characterization, and the events happen not because of internal motivation of the characters, but by random chance. They’re mostly just a series of plot twists, each one unconnected to the previous.

  I know it sounds funny to be giving a literary critique to a children’s book, but nowadays there are so many great authors creating amazing stories for kids. Golden Books? Not so much.

• [monstrinho_do_biscoito]

  i have to say i find his art very flat and unappealing. I’d have hated it as a child. but that’s just my opinion

• [Roy Trumbull]

  I wish some truly talented but sick artist would do these stories as the Brothers Grimm wrote them. Goldilocks ends with the wolf eating her, The evil queen in Snow White is set to dancing in red hot steel clogs, Rapunzel has twins by the prince without benefit of wedlock, and the bad sisters in Cinderella have their eyes put out, etc..

• [Tavie]

  This one sort of cements you as my favorite guest-blogger ever. Love Tenggren, love all your posts. Saw some beautiful Tenggren originals at the

• [ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive]

  If you like Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen and Arthur Rackham, check out Tenggren’s early work, like Grimm’s Fairy Tales and other early Tenggren books. The amazing thing about Tenggren was that he could paint in a dozen different styles, but they all contained the classical principles of compositional balance and amazingly varied rendering techniques.

  You’ll find out a lot about golden age children’s book illustrators at the ASIFA-Hollywood online exhibit of classic illustration.

[Gloria]

You both kidding? I love it! I love how the figures are slightly posed, so that every detail and movement becomes something to look at carefully. It’s so clean and colourful.

[Anonymous]

I grew up with Golden books and I have to say I’m very familiar with the work of Tenggren. He was one of the great children’s illustrators. His drawing skills are superb. We were all charmed by his work. Your other commentators are no doubt looking at Tenggren in terms of what passes for illustration today, which is a far cry from the golden age. Color, vibrant printing and dramatic layout have taken the place of great illustration. It’s not unlike the change in films. Today outrageous plots, special effects and fast pace hide the fact that the actors can’t compare with the great actors of the 30s, 40s and 50s. This is not to say one is better than the other…just different. Our taste has changed. We don’t care as much about the fine points of acting, say, or drawing ability. We want to be blown away by the drama of it all.

[2k]

The auras alone were enough to spell-bind me.
…and something about the textures really make the pictures POP!

[Anonymous]

i like his earlier style now but as a kid thought it was old-fashioned. later style too simple and modern. impressed by the roster of artists, tho.

[Anonymous]

Awesome-reminds me of illuminated manuscripts. I have to wonder about the age of the previous commentors; I’ve had this conversation about clunky Hanna Barbera style animation of the 60′s-70′s vs. the anime influence that start in the 80′s with a younger co-worker. I think things have really changed as far as expectations in animation and illustration.

[Mikey]

My wife is Gustaf Tenggren’s great-niece so we have had the chance to see some of his work that was not meant for publication and it’s just fantastic.

If you ever want to geek out for a while and you happen to be in Minneapolis, at the University of Minnesota they have tons of his original work that was used to make these books in their Children’s Literature research library there. My wife and I spent several hours just going through boxes of sketches, watercolors, mock-ups, notes, and all kind of Tenggren stuff while we were there.

[GrymRpr]

I was quite lucky growing up in the late 60′s early 70′s.

I Grew up right next to Western Publishing/Golden Key.
What was Their Poughkeepsie Plant:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&source=hp&q=Poughkeepsie&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Poughkeepsie,+Dutchess,+New+York&ll=41.725622,-73.929448&spn=0.0045,0.008497&t=h&z=17

Plenty of free Gold Key Comics every week from the employees on the loading dock for the area Kids.

If I Remember rightly.. Mattel Toys bought the plant in the early 80′s.

As an added bonus: Right next to it Was one of the Older New York State Dept. of Mental health Facility’s from the late 1800′s ( Just scroll up a touch from that google link and you should see it ) Been falling apart for decades now.

[BdgBill]

I have Golden Books and my Grandmother to thank for the fact that I was a solid reader on my first day of kindergarten. This lead to me briefly being considered a genius of some sort (this idea was a distant memory by grade 3).

I firmly believe that the love of reading is the greatest gift I have ever received.

[Vanwall]

My son had us read, and then read himself, Tibor Gergely’s “The Fire Engine Book” until it fell apart. An amazing series of books.

[Doug Nelson]

I never read Little Golden books, preferring Big Little
Books (kind of the Marvel to LGB’s DC).