Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
Turn the pages with the arrows, keyboard, or a swipe.
Grosset & Dunlap, Published 1973. Hardcover (board book), [12] pp. (unpaginated); 22 cm; A Preschool Puppet Book no. 9732; printed and bound in Japan by Zokeisha Publications, Tokyo; illustrated throughout with color photographs of puppets in miniature sets.
In Good condition. Glossy pictorial boards with small chip and loss at head of spine, mild shelf wear and rubbing to edges and corners, and light soiling to covers; original $1.75 price on rear cover. Binding tight. Board pages rubbed along edges, with small abraded patch at upper left corner of first spread and scattered light surface scuffs. Otherwise unmarked. Read-along board book for toddlers on giant and red pandas, told in six double-page scenes of plush puppets posed in miniature bamboo-forest, zoo and bedroom sets and photographed in color. Rear cover lists the eighteen Preschool Puppet Books, from What Is It? to Colors. "T. Izawa" is Tadasu Iizawa (1909-1994), Japanese playwright and writer of NHK children's puppet programs, who founded Shiba Productions in 1958 with designer Shigemi Hijikata and puppet maker Kihachiro Kawamoto; their photographed-puppet picture books were issued in English by Grosset & Dunlap and Golden Press. Text describes pandas as rarely seen even in zoos and as members of the raccoon family, a classification still debated at the time.