Holiday House

The history of Holiday House is available in Holiday House: The First Sixty-Five Years by Russell Freedman and Barbara Elleman, published in 2000. Here are some excerpts:

"In 1935, a new firm called Holiday House set up three desks in the corner of a printing plant and prepared to publish its first list of books. 'The event was unique in at least one respect,' Publishers Weekly would say. 'The new company was the first American publishing house ever founded with the purpose of publishing nothing but children's books.'

"The first of its kind, then—a specialized publisher with a unique program and a diminutive catalog, small enough to fit in a child's palm. The catalog announced five books, three nursery rhyme broadsides, and the publisher's intentions: '. . . Its editorial policy embraces only such books as are worthy of inclusion in a child's permanent library.' " And so began our history.

What is the story behind the little boy sitting on a rock and reading a book at the top of the website? From the history: " 'In 1938,' according to the Holiday House News, 'we came across Kenneth Grahame's story, "The Reluctant Dragon," . . . and asked Ernest H. Shepard to illustrate it. One of his drawings was of the little boy who read "natural history and fairy-tales . . . just took them as they came, in a sandwichy sort of way, without making any distinctions; and really his course of reading strikes one as rather sensible." Both idea and drawing were so fitting that the little boy reading a book inevitably became our permanent device. . . . The new colophon appeared on the cover of the 1939 Holiday House catalog. . . . He has identified the firm ever since. . . .' "

Holiday House "has changed over the years, sometimes by design and sometimes not. And it will continue to evolve and adapt. Yet in many ways it remains the same old place: relatively small, very independent, and completely devoted to its authors and illustrators."

- Holiday House website