Alternate Thumbelina

Here's some more findings from the Kerlan Collection.
 Tenggren's Thumbelina was published by Simon and Schuster in 1953 as the first in a series of Tenggren fairy tales. It features marvelous paintings in the jazzy, decorative style that Tenggren used through the fifties. For those of you already familiar with this Little Golden Book it might be fun to see this alternate cover.

Tenggren's Thumbelina

Little Golden Books, 
Simon and Schuster 1953.
Copyright Random Books

Alternate cover for Tenggren's Thumbelina

By courtesy of Kerlan collection of the
University of Minnesota Libraries with permissions
from the Archives and Special Collections

In this first cover proposal we see a girl on top of the swallow but the style is quite different from the final cover. This year Tenggren produced another Little Golden Book, The Topsy Turvy Circus and it looks as if he fetched this girl from that French-inspired story. There is also a great influence from Mary Blair in the rendering. Mary Blair was one of Tenggren's colleagues at the Character Model Department at Disney's Studio and made a great row of Little Golden Books for Simon and Schuster.
Other books in the Tenggren Fairy Tale series were Jack and the Beanstalk in 1953, The Golden Goose in 1954, The giant with the Three Golden Hairs in 1955, and Snow White and Rose Red in 1957. More books in this series was planned: The Goose Girl and The Magic Snuffbox were two of those who never reached the book shelves but remain as sketch dummies in the Kerlan Collection.