Another variation came after the Huntsman returned from his mission and advised the Queen that Snow White was dead. In the Big Little Book, she kidnapped the prince and locked him in the dungeon. Queen Grimhilde was her name, and she was just as menacing in print. What would the Snow White story be without the Queen? Officially referred to as “The Evil Queen” by Disney, she was actually given a name for the printed stories, like the comics and the Big Little Book. When the dwarfs first discover someone (or something) is in their room, and Dopey is elected to investigate, he verbalizes his findings. Another relatively large modification made was, Dopey spoke! “Let’s dance” was one of his lines from the entertainment scene. Some of the art from the comics appeared to have been traced, only flipped horizontally. When artists had to draw that scene for the comics, it had been adapted to fit in one panel! When it came time for the Big Little Book version, more changes followed. The scene in the film ran roughly seven minutes in length. This is the scene in which they all danced, and some sang, in the dwarfs’ cottage. We were then shown the “entertainment scene” from the beloved film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Another space-saving technique saw the dialogue shifting from dialogue bubbles in the comic strip to having text on the left page and images on the right page in the Big Little Books. This of course altered the scene’s scope, however thanks to clever positioning, they made it work. Since they had a significantly smaller amount of width in which to work, images had to be cropped.

The Mail Pilot Big Little Book was adapted from the comic strip version, which was adapted from the short. Spoiler Alert: Mickey ends up defeating Pete in this one as well. It turns out Pete is up to his old tricks, and is kidnapping pilots mid-flight from a dirigible, which contains its own small town. In it, Mickey is equipped with his own machine gun, because pilots and their planes have been disappearing at an alarming rate. The Big Little Book version, however, is somewhat different. The Mail Pilot is a clever little short, and one of J.B.’s favorites.

Like always, Pete underestimates Mickey’s ingenuity and sheer force of will, as an unarmed Mickey manages to defeat his perpetual rival. On one of his mail runs, Mickey encounters a sky bandit (and Mickey villain staple) by the name of Pete, who uses a machine gun to conquer his airborne prey.

showed us the Mickey Mouse short, The Mail Pilot. Big Little Books were often adapted from existing stories or films. In a later story, Mickey sailed to Treasure Island. Gottfredson was a fan of adventure stories himself, thus the plot of Mickey Mouse entailing Minnie Mouse being kidnapped by gypsies. It was drawn by Disney Legend Floyd Gottfredson, who was actually given a fair amount of autonomy on the project. They sold for 10 cents, and were geared towards an audience of young adventurers, featuring such characters as Tarzan, Terry and the Pirates, and Flash Gordon.ĭisney’s first foray into Big Little Books came in 1933, and bore the simple title of Mickey Mouse. The books were roughly 3.5 by 4.5 inches in size, hundreds of pages long, and printed on newsprint. Also referred to as “Better Little Books,” the first official title was The Adventures of Dick Tracy. The little books with the big name got their start in 1932, thanks to the Whitman Publishing Company. took the podium to provide some terrific history on all things Big Little Books. After a nice intro by Michael Labrie, Director of Collections at The Walt Disney Family Museum, J.B. is responsible for such wonderful books as: Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney, South of the Border With Disney (one of my favorites), and the soon-to-be-released The Fairest One of All: The Making of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. On Saturday, August 25, I attended a presentation at the Walt Disney Family Museum titled “Walt Disney’s Big Little Books,” hosted by renowned Disney author and historian J.B.

The mail pilot 1933 original titles