Puffin Picture Books

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Puffin Picture Books is an English-language , always illustrated book series for children, which was published up to number 120 between 1940 and 1965 by Penguin Books . In addition to the main series, 10  puffin cut-out books and 9 baby puffins for smaller children were  published. In later years remakes of similar content followed.

Edition history

  • Suggestions for the series and its beginning in World War II

The book series (abbreviation: PP ) was published by Noel Carrington . On the one hand, he had been encouraged to do this at the end of 1933 on the basis of a collection of Soviet children's books from the 1920s that had been presented to him by the English artist Pearl Binder after she had returned from a stay in the USSR as an “artist in residence”. Carrington was impressed with the design of the books, which were designed to spread knowledge about the workings of things and facilities in everyday life among children in large print runs. Among the authors were u. a. Vladimir Wassiljewitsch Lebedew ( Yesterday and Today , 1925), Yevgeny Tscharuschin ( Various Animals , 1929) or Michail Zechanowski ( post author was S. Marschak , 1928).
On the other hand, he was also strongly inspired by children's book series published in France in the 1930s, which to a large extent benefited from Russian artists who had emigrated. Here are first the albums about " Père Castor " started by Verlag Flammarion in 1931 , which were initially written by Nathalie Parain , who stylistically referred to the constructivism of the Bauhaus and the Moscow WChUTEMAS . a. were also illustrated by the artists F. Rojankovsky and I. Bilibin, who emigrated from Russia, and the Ukrainian Alexandra Exter . From 1934 onwards , Gallimard published the series Les contes du chat perché (The fairytale cat tells) by Marcel Aymé . Finally, Carrington was also deeply impressed by the stories about Babar the Elephant (1931 to 1941) by Jean de Brunhoff . The idea of ​​creating a comparable series for children in Great Britain became more and more entrenched in his mind.

After an initial project meeting with Allen Lane, the publisher of Penguin Books, whom he wanted to win over to the publication of the series, in 1938 the project was initially published due to the economic imponderables of the extremely tense political situation in Europe in connection with the Munich Agreement been put on hold. With the outbreak of war and the bombing of English cities by Nazi Germany from the summer of 1940, the situation had changed radically. The publisher's interest now consisted in providing the English children evacuated to the country during the war with books that dealt in particular with agricultural and natural history topics to encourage and impart knowledge about their new surroundings. To this end, he came back to Carrington's project, which was initially postponed, and now pushed the start of the series that would be the first in the publishing program for children. Nonetheless, the publication of the first series was delayed more and more due to paper restrictions, price increases and the bombing of suppliers, which always required countermeasures - but they could still be delivered to retailers in time for the Christmas business in 1940. In view of the dominance of war events in public life, which all English children had immediately before their eyes, the first three volumes (PP1 to PP3) dealt with the war itself and only the fourth volume was devoted to life on a farm ( On the Farm ); overall the motto of the first episode was "War and Life on a Farm". Illustrators were James Holland (PP1 War on Land , PP2 War at Sea ) and James Gardner (PP3 War in the Air , PP4 On the Farm ).

  • Further development of the series up to the setting

The series experienced a rapid upswing during the war years, although the next volumes could not appear until a year later. In 1945 the number PP49 (Peggy Hart: The Magic of Coal ) was reached. In the 1950s, the series asserted itself on the market with more and more new titles and also many reprints. Many volumes were even included in school lessons because of their clarity, which also ensured demand. Fifteen years since the series began, the number PP107 appeared with The Yuletide Cottage (The Christmas House). There was still a gap here from three previous numbers, but it was quickly closed in the following years.
Towards the end of the decade, however, the sales figures left more and more to be desired. Lanes' decision to finally discontinue the series in 1965 had several causes. Due to their landscape format, it has always been not so easy for booksellers to present them in stores to promote sales. This was particularly evident in the cut-out volumes. Pre-cut parts quickly fell out here if the books came into somewhat more robust children's hands while looking at them in the store. Carrington had also retired in 1956, which meant that his ongoing commitment to the series was now missing - so only 13 numbers were distributed over the last ten years of the series. After all, television, with its far more diverse possibilities of being able to work on topics attractively and vividly, had given the series more and more competition among its childhood readers.

  • Life Histories (PP116)

The author Paxton Chadwick (1903–1961), who was commissioned to create the artwork for the volume, was unable to complete this work before his death. Sheila Fisher, who had worked with Chadwick on previous assignments and therefore knew his working methods and intentions, succeeded. But the Puffin editor Kaye Webb tried in vain to implement the project until the late 1970s - the serial numbering kept its vacancy, because the number 116 was not occupied by any other volume. Only the collecting community, the Penguin Collectors Society, succeeded with the permission of the Penguin Verlag to use the name in converting the plates and texts from the illustrator's widow, Lee Chadwick, into a printed book. It was published in 1996 with an edition of 1,000 copies, with a 12-page booklet of the same format on the history of the book's edition.

Equipment, editions and sales price

  • Format, cover design, illustrations

The volumes, including the cover, comprised 32 pages, measured 181 × 222 mm and, in terms of size, corresponded exactly to two Penguin brochures placed side by side. The printing was done from zinc litho plates on which the illustrator applied his drawings directly (autolithography). These plates were transferred to machine plates from which offset lithography was used.

The volume number or sales prices were only partially indicated on the colored illustrated covers. As a row symbol, however, a puffin always adorned the band with, depending on the designer, different plumage. For cost reasons, only half of the pages were provided with illustrations in color, the other half remained black and white. Some titles are also bound in cardboard, which were sold at a higher price. The first edition of PP115 Butterflies (1961) appeared only in laminated cardboard tape.

  • Circulation size and subsequent editions

Due to the allocation of paper, the print run of the first four volumes was between 20,000 and 50,000 copies, with the publisher missing precise records. The bestseller in the series was probably the volume The Battle of Britain (PP21, illustrations: James Gardner, text: David Garnett ) , published in 1941 - albeit with official support from the British Ministry of Information - with 4,800,000 copies; it has been translated into 26 languages ​​for propaganda purposes. Usually 50,000 copies per title should be sold in order to generate the tightly calculated costs and a publishing profit. To what extent this was successful for all titles, some of which had no re-editions, cannot be assessed due to a lack of published sales figures.

  • Sales prices

The first issues cost the same as the normal text penguin paperbacks of the main series Sixpence . Later the purchase price rose to initially 1 shilling , until it reached 5 shillings for the volume PP120 Seashore Life (animal life on the beach) published in March 1965 . At this price, however, PP118 Historic Houses of Great Britain had already been sold in 1962 . And PP115 Butterflies (butterflies) was even sold for 7 shilling 6 pence (7/6) in 1961. But here it was also a hard cover, which was more expensive due to the manufacturing process. Titles that had a very long running time with multiple editions, such as PP102 The Human Body or PP117 The Puffinbook of Lettering , were sold in 1983 for £ 1.50 or 1981 for 95 new pence on the market. Some of the booklets had a price indication printed on them. When price increases were carried out, older stock titles were provided with a round price sticker at this point.

subjects

The topics covered by the series are very broad. The five early war volumes were only due to the circumstances of the time ; In addition to the ones already mentioned, there was also PP8 Great Deeds of the War by Roland Davis.
Volumes on British and international flora and fauna take up a lot of space. Examples include his on the general fauna : Anrid Johnston Animals of India (PP18, 1942), Richard Chopping Butterflies in Britain (PP29, 1943) and Maurice Wilson Dogs (PP56, 1946). The interest in ornithology, which is very widespread in Great Britain, is shown by a. James Fisher / PF Millard Birds of the Village (PP20, 1944), CF Tunnicliffe Birds of the Estuary (birds at estuaries - PP90, 1952) and EAR Ennion Bird Study in an Garden (PP106, 1958) reverence. The flora is dedicated to u. a. the authors SR Badmin Trees in Britain (PP31, 1943), Isabel Alexander The Story of Plant Life (PP58, 1946) and Paxton Chadwick Wild Flowers (PP81, 1949).
In addition to the above, the representation of rural life PP4 the volumes by Margaret Scott-Brown / Leo P. Dowd Country Holiday (Ferien auf dem Lande - PP33, 1944), M. and A. Potter A History of Countryside (PP37, 1944) and G. Stapledon / SR Badmin Farm crops in Britain (Agricultural crops in Great Britain - PP98, 1955).
In the series there are several volumes on the technology of means of transport, such as WJ Bassett-Lowke / FE Cortney A Book of Trains (PP10, 1941), Laurence Dunn / AC and MJ Hardy A Book of Ships (PP10, 1941), Phyllis Ladyman About a Motor Car (PP38, 1946) and John Stroud Airliners (PP86, 1949).
Children's historical interest should be taken with the books by RB Sergeant / Edward Bawden The Arabs (PP61, 1947), Helen et al. Richard Leacroft The Building of Ancient Egypt (PP101, 1954), Patrick Nicolle A Book of Armor (PP97, 1954) and Tsui Chi / Carolin Jackson The Story of China (PP47, 1945).
Other volumes included a. the human body (PP102), astronomy (PP92), maps (PP67), postage stamps (PP69), printing (PP70), iron and coal as well as tea and cotton processing (PP79, PP49, PP72, PP99) dedicated.

Finally, illustrated stories also took up a large part of the series program at the beginning. The following can be mentioned in particular: Phyllis Ginger Alexander the Circus Pony (PP24, 1943), the two cat stories from Kathleen Hale, Orlando's Evening Out (PP14, 1941) and Orlando's Home Life (PP26, 1942), Joel Chandler / Walter Trier Brer Rabbit ( PP34, 1945) and Chiang Yee The Story of Ming (PP36, 1944).

Puffin Cut-Out Books

Mostly in a slightly enlarged format published from 1947 (PC1-3) to 1953 (PC11) - the number PC6 was not issued - 10  Puffin Cut-Out Books (cut-out editions) in a separate sub-series next to several cut-out volumes in the main series, such as B. from WS Cowell Make Your Own Zoo (PP40, 1945) and Make Your Own Farm (PP41, 1945) and from RB Talbot Kelly Paperbirds (paper birds - PP52, 1947).
Six volumes appeared in 2 sets. They once offered the opportunity to put together a village in the Cotswolds with paper houses that were pinned together and not glued (PC1-3, circulation: 50,000 copies). The 3 volumes A Half-Timbered Village (PC7-9) were designed in a similar way, in which a village was to be built from half-timbered houses . On the occasion of the Festival of Britain in 1951, the English artist Rowland Emett designed a festival train ( Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway ). This idea was taken up with the cut-out band PC7 The Emett Festival Railway .

Baby Puffin Books

This offshoot of the main series also follows an idea by Carrington who, after the Puffin Picture Books had been established on the market, had thought about a comparative series for the very little ones. The 9 titles published from 1947 to 1953 at the price of Sixpence were also produced using the autolithography process. They were only half the size of the Puffin Picture Books (7 × 4¼ "). The first two little books (BP1 and BP2), ABC - a kind of primer - and the counting book 1, 2, 3 , drew and wrote in November 1943 Dorothy Chapman. A year later John Harwood also published two titles in the series, Puffin Rhymes and The old woman and her pig . The last Baby Puffin Book, The Holiday Train Goes to the Moon (BP9 ), appeared in April 1948 and was part of a 3-volume cycle designed by Peter Heaton about the adventures of a holiday train, the planned continuations of which could no longer be published due to the end of the series. There is uncertainty about the circulation of the 5 war editions. But Peter Heaton's Dobbish: The Paper Horse (Das Papierpferd, BP8, 1946) brought it to a total of 63,250 copies.

Row advertising and directories

The publisher presented the range of available volumes primarily in the series itself through lists mostly printed on the second page. In addition, new titles were initially published in the publisher's advertising Penguins Progress , which was sent to buyers free of charge , the second series of 14 issues of which appeared from July 1946 to 1951 and for the first time contained references to new PP releases in the 1946 Christmas edition (3rd episode) with sample illustrations. The booksellers were also announced new publications with monthly lists, which were also sent to private customers when postage was paid.

In the first main catalog of the publisher from 1946, "A complete list of the publications of Penguin Boooks" (Harmondsworth 1946), all 58 titles of the main series published up to then - PP1 ( War on Land ) to PP58 ( The Story of Plant Life ) - and 8 baby puffins listed numerically. The Puffin Books are also regularly listed in later Classified Lists, but only the available ones in alphabetical order.
In 1950 the publisher issued a sixteen-page brochure “Puffins Progress” especially for this series in the form of a so-called “Classified list”, the cover of which is adorned with 16 cover motifs from the series. In addition, several publisher's catalogs appeared on the entire range of puffins, in which the local series was included. Among them was an eight-part leporello from mid-1950 “Puffins Galore”, which was followed by the title “Puffin Books for Children” (24 pages) at the end of the 1950s. In the mid-1960s, “The Puffin Catalog for Children 1963-1964” (32 pages) and in 1970 the 60-page “Complete Puffin Catalog 1970” appeared, which listed the available puffins according to sub-series. In the latter, 13 Puffin Picture Books were listed, including "Historic Houses of Great Britain" (PP118), " Pond Life" (PP93) or " Village and Town" (PP16), although the last and final PP new publication already had five Years ago. The new Picture Puffins series , on the other hand, already had 22 titles.

Finally, the birthday catalog "Happy Birthday Puffin - 1991 Catalog - 50 Years" (88 pages) delighted the small and large fans of the series.

Remakes of the series by the publisher

  • Picture Puffin Books *

This series, introduced by Kaye Webb, sees itself in part as a continuation of the original series in that it mainly continues its fictional branch, it appeared from October 1968. In the 1980s, titles of US origin were increasingly included, which are again assigned to the non-fiction area, such as Donald Crews Truck , School Bus and Freight Train (all 1985). Your logo is based on that of the PP series, in that the series name is visually linked directly to the puffin that gives it its name.

  • New Puffin Picture Books *

These volumes, which were produced in a somewhat smaller format of 190 × 171 mm, appeared only from 1975 to 1977 and continued the non-fiction book segment of the PP series for a short time. With the latter, comparisons can be made very well about the developments in technology that have occurred since the 1950s. Some original PP titles come back in a modernized guise and with only slightly changed titles, such as Build a House (formerly PP60), Printing a Book (formerly PP70), On the Seashore (formerly PP120).

  • Practical puffins

This series, published between 1976 and 1980 based on an idea by the editor of the Australian branch of Penguin Publishing, John Hooker, builds on the idea of ​​the PP series of making it easier for children to understand the environment around them by encouraging them, now even to lend a hand z. B. repairing her bicycle ( Bicycles , 1976), building kites and model airplanes ( Things to fly , 1980) or preparing a festival ( Feasts , 1980).

Acquisitions in the "Harlequin Books" series

Lane wanted after the Second World War to outsource the volumes with short stories from the series, which should only contain non-fiction books. After negotiating with Lane, Carrington managed to obtain a license for a one-time reprint for the retired titles. He gathered these titles under the series name " Harlequin Books" ("HA"). He added three more volumes that had not previously appeared in the main series to the two puffin titles about the cat Orlando. A total of five titles (HA7-11) came onto the market with editions of 50,000 copies each. Of the remaining volumes, only half as many were printed. A cut-out book ( Make your own Zoo , Part I, formerly PP40) has also been transferred here (HC1). The Harlequin Books, which usually featured a harlequin in a circle on the cover as a series logo instead of the puffin, were to reach only 9 titles, although a dozen had been announced.

Serial archive

Documents relating to the development of the series, including correspondence relating to it, can be found in the “Penguin Archive”, which is kept in the special collections of the University of Bristol . Allan Lane was awarded the title of " Master of Arts " (MA) honorary from this university in 1948 .

literature

  • Phil Baines: Puffin by Design. 70 years of Imagination 1940-2010 . Allan Lane, London 2010 (English)
  • JE Morpurgo: Allen Lane. King Penguin . Hutchinson of London, London 1979, pp. 171–173 (English)
  • Penguin Collectors Society (Chris Barling, Tim Graham and others): A checklist of the Puffin Picture Books and Related Series . 2010 (english)
  • Joe Pearson: Drawn direct to the plate. Noel Carrington and the Puffin Picture Books . Penguin Collectors Society, 2010, pp. 83–87 (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Compare the English Wikipedia to: SR Badmin , Edward Bawden , Pearl Binder , Noel Carrington , Richard Chopping , Donald Crews , Rowland Emett , James Gardner , David Garnett , Phyllis Ginger , Kathleen Hale , PF Millard , CF Tunnicliffe, and Kaye Webb .
  2. ↑ She published her analysis of the lithographic children's books of the USSR of those days in the article "Children's Books in Russia" in the January 1934 issue of Design for To-day .
  3. ↑ Compare to this series on the French Wikipedia the article Père Castor and the list of albums for Père Castor .
  4. ↑ Compare the French Wikipedia for Nathalie Parain
  5. ^ Pearson: Drawn direct to the plate . P. 45 f.
  6. ^ Pearson: Drawn direct to the Plate , p. 87
  7. ↑ The publisher's advertising booklet was first published at Christmas 1936, eight pages long and had 9 issues by early 1940. When the first war edition appeared, the series project was not so advanced that it was certain that it would be published. The edition planned for Christmas 1940, which otherwise would have contained a reference to the newly published PP series, was no longer published due to the war. Further advertising brochures were only published again from 1946. Approx. 50,000 readers had received the advertising from the publisher upon request (cf. Penguin First Editions - Penguins Progress website for Penguins Progress magazines ).
  8. ↑ See J. Baines: Puffin by Design . P. 150 ff.
  9. ↑ See J. Baines: Puffin by Design . P. 130 ff.
  10. ↑ See J. Baines: Puffin by Design . P. 134 f.