BENGALURU: It was by a complete accident that I first came across a Big Little Book (BLB). One of the collectors in Bengaluru was selling his collection of rare books and I was interested in acquiring them. When I looked at the lot, I came across an odd-sized book titled The Calcutta Affair by George S Elrick. It did not interest me at that point, until I came across a huge collection of similar sized books at Bells Bookstore in Palo Alto many years later. That’s when I got interested and bought a rare copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Son of Tarzan signed by Gordon Scott, the actor who played Tarzan in five movies between 1955 and 1960. Big Little Books have now become collectibles and are prized for their impeccable design and classic illustrations.
The Great Depression gave rise to inexpensive forms of entertainment: ten-cent motion pictures, free-radio programmes and cheap reading materials. They came from the few industries that prospered during the decade, and their influence was felt deeply and is warmly remembered by millions. The ten-cent BLBs and other forms of entertainment provided escapes from reality and stirred people’s hopes and fantasies of what an ideal world would look like.
The first Big Little Book, The Adventures of Dick Tracy, Detective #707, was published in December 1932 by the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. It was released in time for the Christmas season, marking the beginning of the BLB’s golden age: the period from 1932 to 1938. In mid-1938, Whitman and several competing companies changed their copyrighted logos: Whitman’s Big Little Books became Better Little Books. From 1938-1950 the books slowly faded away due to economic and societal changes and stiff competition from comic books. The series continued until its end in the 1960s.
BLBs were small, compact books designed with a captioned illustration opposite each page of text. A Big Little Book was typically 3 inches wide and 4.5 inches high, with 212 to 432 pages making an approximate thickness of 1.5 inches. Inside the book, the design usually displayed full-page black-and-white illustrations (later books had colour) on the right side, facing the pages of text on the left. Stories were often related to ongoing radio programmes. Some of the biggest stars in these series include Buck Rogers, Dick Tracey, Betty Boop, Alley Oop and Mickey Mouse.
Over 1,100 BLBs were published by various publications. They seem to transcend being just books. Small, blocky and colourful, the books have the aroma and yellowish glow of old newsprint, and they hold the promise of adventure, laughter and love. Some BLBs such as the The Return of the Phantom were flip books where the character appears to move when the pages are flipped in quick succession.
Make mine a small one was an essay published in The New York Times where the author Powell Lawrence Clark talks of the pleasures of small books. Apart from the fact that they occupy less space in your home, one advantage is that you could hold it in one hand and read, while holding a cup of tea in the other!
If you need to read one book about BLB, I would choose The Big Book of Big Little Books by Billy Borden, which features jacket art and illustrations from rare BLBs. Needless to say, the author has been a lifelong collector of BLBs. I am eager to see if the pandemic will see the return of forms of cheap entertainment, similar to BLBs!