Walt Disney’s Giant Book of Fairy Tales

Published in 1974 by Purnell Books. Over thirty fairy tales – and not all the usual suspects either, ‘Toads and Diamonds’, anyone? When there was an existing Disney film, they used scenes from that, but when there wasn’t, they just bunged in characters they already had. So we have Grumpy in place of Rumpelstiltskin, and Alice (of Wonderland fame) standing in for the little match girl as well as several other characters. Somehow I can’t imagine Disney going for this approach today!

Snowstiltkin?

Pre Lumiere, Cogsworth et al

Alice in disguise

Isn’t that John from Peter Pan? And Figaro? And King Stefan from Sleeping Beauty?

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Vintage books: Wonderful Worlds of Walt Disney

Another version of Alice

Covers

I picked these up in Hoddesdon a few weeks ago and just got around to having a look at them.

Here we have two 1965 Wonderful Worlds of Walt Disney books – Stories from Other Lands and Fantasyland. There are apparently four in the series. They were produced by Artist and Writers Press Inc and published by the House of Grolier.

Fantasyland contents

Other Lands contents

You’ll see from the contents pages that they are story collections. Some are adapted from Disney films – both animation and live action.

Snow White

A Swiss village

Some stories use film stills (again both animated and live action) and some are re-drawn using the animation style as in the Alice in Wonderland and Snow White stories (by Al Dempster and Campbell Grant respectively).

All in all they make lovely, varied and interesting storybooks. I didn’t have these when I was a child as far as I remember, but now I’m glad I’ve got them!