Adele Boeske cooed after reciting a string of book titles - "The Pokey Little Puppy," "The Little Red Hen," "The Alphabet From A to Z" - as childhood memories intrinsically linked to the Little Golden Book series came flooding back.

"Oh, 'Three Little Kittens.' That was my favorite. I had to be 4 or 5 years old," said Boeske, a Derry, N.H., resident who is head of children's services at Derry Public Library.

"I wanted to read so badly before I went to school. I was trying to read those books, and when I could, I was so happy. My mother says I used to sit in the back seat of the car and go 'dadadada,' pretending to read the words, but really just making nonsense sounds."

Boeske was born in 1947, just five years after the legendary children's book series launched. Little Golden Books were wildly popular from the get-go, selling nearly 183 million copies within the first 10 years.

Now, 65 years later, sales of the books have topped two billion. And Random House is marking the anniversary with a historical look at the classics in "Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children's Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever, and Became An American Icon Along the Way." The $40 coffee table book written by Leonard S. Marcus released last Tuesday.

"Little Golden Books reflect our times," said Diane Muldrow, editorial director of Random House/Golden Books Young Readers Group.

As America changed, so did the stories and illustrations, she pointed out.

"They are a mirror of our culture," Muldrow said.

Back in 1941, George Duplaix, president of the Artists and Writers Guild Inc., saw the need for inexpensive children's books. At the time, books were priced at $2 and considered a luxury for families. A year later, Simon & Schuster Publishing sold a dozen new books under the Little Golden Books imprint for 25 cents apiece. Today, they sell for $2.99.

"The original 12 books had dust jackets and were 48 pages long," Muldrow said. "They were then cut down because of wartime cutbacks. The back flap featured advertisements to buy war stamps and bonds."

The entire Little Golden Books collection features 1,200 story lines that reflect the popular culture of their time. Many 1950s editions centered around cinematic Westerns. A significant number of early 1960s books coincided with children's Saturday morning television programs.

Boeske remembers reading "Little Lulu and her Magic Tricks" at age 7 in 1954, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto" when she was 11 in 1958, and "Yogi Bear" as a 13-year-old in 1960.

On a whim, Methuen resident Carol Laverdure, 65, decided to pick up a 25-cent Little Golden Book around 1970 while antiquing in Hallowell, Maine.

Decades of collecting later, a second bedroom in her condo now boasts 924 Little Golden Books dating back to 1942. The vast majority are first editions. Some are duplicate copies of the same book. And some of the Christmas-themed editions have red bindings instead of the traditional gold.

"It's exciting because I'm ahead of the collection being considered an antique," Laverdure said. "Someone offered me $1,000 for my collection years ago, sight unseen. That was when I only had half of what I have now."

Laverdure adores all of the books featuring Raggedy Ann, such as "Raggedy Ann and the Cookie Snatcher," published in 1972. She also treasures every handwritten name - Lora, Karen, Stevie Sundholm and Susan Kim - scribbled inside the books by their original owners, despite how difficult the scrawled script is to read.

An expert on all things Golden, Laverdure said the price for collecting early Little Golden Books has risen over the years - from a few cents to $25 and more.

"They'd be marked for 10 cents, 20 cents. Now, you'll see some are $20 for one book," she said. "Only once or twice have I bought one for $25. And I have passed up a couple that I regretted later because of the (high) price."

Other changes are evident through the years. When Little Golden Books first published "The New Baby" in 1948, an expectant mother just days away from welcoming a new addition to her family is depicted showing no visible signs of pregnancy. For the 1975 reprinting, illustrator Eloise Wilkin decided to more realistically show the mother and her pregnant belly.

The cover of "The New Baby" also changed over the years. The 1954 edition features an infant sleeping on her tummy - a big no-no since the awareness of sudden infant death syndrome. The 1975 cover depicts a far safer environment than previous editions.

Starting in the 1960s, illustrations were also altered to represent a multicultural community. "My Little Golden Book about God" originally featured Caucasian children only in 1956. Wilkin chose to re-illustrate a few pages for subsequent editions to include children of other races in 1974, Random House's Muldrow noted.

But the most popular title of all time was printed in 1942, proving that children's interests really haven't changed all that much over the decades.

"The Pokey Little Puppy' is now the best-selling picture book of all time. It's a corny, sweet story," said Muldrow. "When I do a new book, I pick very classic subject matters. 'I'm a Truck' is a very classic subject matter, but (also) a new book"

The story unfolds

1942: Simon & Schuster publishes a dozen Little Golden Books: "The Poky Little Puppy," "Three Little Kittens," "Bedtime Stories," "The Alphabet A-Z," "Mother Goose," "Prayers for Children," "The Little Red Hen," "Nursery Songs," "The Golden Book of Fairy Tales," "Baby's Book," "The Animals of Farmer Jones," "This Little Piggy." They were sold for just 25 cents each.

1943: Five months after their introduction to the public, individual Golden books from 1942 are already on their third printing. A total of 1.5 million copies are in print.

1944: Simon & Schuster creates a Little Golden Books division called Sandpiper Press because of the series' enormous success.

1952: Almost 183 million Little Golden Books sold in the first 10 years of printing, with "The Night Before Christmas" alone selling more than 4 million copies.

1953: Book sales skyrocket, totaling close to 300 million.

1954: Little Golden Books become available in most countries except the Soviet Union, where they were considered too capitalistic at the time.

1982: More than 800 million Little Golden Books are sold by the series' 40th birthday.

1986: The one billionth Little Golden Book, "The Poky Little Puppy," is printed.

1992: A permanent Little Golden Books exhibit, "Little Golden Books and American Culture 1942-1992," is installed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., to mark the 50th anniversary.

2001: Little Golden Books Classic line is launched, bringing back popular vintage titles. Many titles sold more than 200,000 copies in just over a year. The first six titles in the new library are "Richard Scarry's Good Night Little Bear," "Animal Orchestra," "The Lion's Paw," "The Fire Engine Book," "The Little Red Hen," and "The Good Humor Man."

2002: Little Golden Books celebrates its 60th anniversary with a special edition boxed set of Little Golden Books Classics.

2002: The Golden Books Library now includes more than 1,200 titles. More than two billion Little Golden Books have been printed - enough to reach the moon.

2007: Little Golden Books celebrates its 65th birthday.

Source: randomhouse.com/golden/lgb/



Little Golden price tag

* 1942: 25 cents

* 1952: 25 cents

* 1962: 29 cents

* 1968: 39 cents

* 1977: 59 cents

* 1982: 89 cents

* 1986: 99 cents

* 2007: $2.99

Source: randomhouse.com/golden/lgb/