by Robert L. May, Denver Gillen, Michael Emberly
In 1939 Robert L. May, a copywriter working at Chicago's Montgomery Ward & Co., wrote a holiday story at the request of his employer. Almost two and a half million copies of the little tale about a reindeer with a shiny red nose were given away to all the children who visited Montgomery Ward stores that year. The rest is history. Over seventy years later, the beloved classic is once again available in a hardcover faithful facsimile of the 1939 Rudolph, with original text and original Denver Gillen illustrations.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
May grew up in an affluent, secular Jewish home in New Rochelle, New York. He had a brother and two sisters. One of the sisters, Evelyn May, is the grandmother of the well-known economist Steven D. Levitt, of “Freakonomics” fame. Another sister, Margaret, married songwriter Johnny Marks in 1947. May graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1926. Robert May’s parents were hard hit by the Great Depression (1929) and lost their wealth. Sometime in the 1930s, May moved to Chicago and took a job as a low-paid in-house advertising copywriter for Montgomery Ward. In early 1939, May’s boss at Montgomery Ward asked him to write a “cheery” Christmas book for shoppers and suggested that an animal be the star of the book. Montgomery Ward had been buying and giving away coloring books for Christmas every year and it was decided that creating their own book would save money and be a nice good-will gesture.
ISBN-13:9781557091390
Publisher:Applewood Books
Publication date:10/01/1990
Pages:32
Age Range:5 - 7 Years
- Books for Children | Holidays & Celebrations - Christmas & Advent
- Reindeer -Stories in rhyme