Beginner Books
The Cat in the Hat was published by Random House. However, because of its success, an independent publishing company was formed, called Beginner Books. Geisel was the president and editor and the Cat in the Hat served as their mascott. Beginner Books was chartered as a series of books oriented toward various stages of early reading development. (From 1957 to 1960, Random House was the distributor of Beginner Books. In 1960, Random House purchased Beginner Books, and it became a division of Random House.) The second book in the series, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, published in 1958, was nearly as popular.
Springing from this series of beginning readers were such standards as A Fly Went By (1958), Sam and the Firefly (1958), Green Eggs and Ham (1960), Go, Dog. Go! (1961), Hop on Pop (1963), and Fox in Socks (1965), each a monument in the picturebook industry, and also significant in the historical development of early readers. All are still in print and remain very popular over forty years after their initial publication.
Creators in the Beginner Book series included Stan and Jan Berenstain, P. D. Eastman, Roy McKie, and Helen Palmer (Mr. Geisel's wife). The Beginner Books dominated the children's picturebook market of the 1960s, and still plays a significant role today within the phases of students' reading development. The early success of Beginner Books, both from a commercial and learn-to-read perspective, initiated the blurring between educational and entertainment books.
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Famous quotes containing the words beginner and/or books:
“A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that ... he is going to be a beginner all his life.”
—R.G. (Robin George)
“If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself “Why?” afterwards than before. Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)