Good morning my toy-dusty friends!
It’s high time for another book recommendation, so here we go:
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1989, BILL PEET: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY measures in at 10 x 8 inches and has 190 pages. A nice sized book! It’s loaded with outstanding illustrations and was named a Caldecott Honor Book.
If you’re a Disney fan, this book is especially for you because Peet worked on many of the original animated classic films, such as DUMBO and SWORD IN THE STONE, and he offers an intriguing look at some of the behind-the-scenes happenings at the Disney studio during these times.
The book begins with his childhood, and how he always loved to draw things.
He tells the events leading up to being hired by Disney as an “in-betweener.”
Peet writes:
“We were put to work as in-betweeners, with the tedious, painstaking job of adding hundreds of drawings in between hundreds of other drawings to move Donald or Mickey from here to there.”
Being a creative type, Peet longed to be involved with the character-designing and story-developing aspect of cartoon-making, and was not happy being an in-betweener.
But as fate would have it, Bill Peet would go on to rise high in the Disney story-developing department.
And he continually impressed Walt Disney, himself.
His work on Disney classics spanned decades.
Peet even writes of the Disney studio during World War 2, when they became “…totally involved in the war effort, producing training films, propaganda films to sell war bonds, and films to vilify and ridicule the enemy.”
While working at Disney, Peet began a career on the side, writing and illustrating picture books.
Eventually, though, Bill Peet and Walt Disney would have a falling out.
Why?
And what happened next?
I guess you’ll have to read the book to find out!
Toydust out!
NEXT WEEK:
NEWS-FINDER BOB RETURNS!