What Ever Happened to Disney Read-Along?

I'm reaching the end of interesting posts I can base on items from "the box" (see my 9/11/08 post for details). In front of all the file folders containing old drawings, magazines, and printouts, and underneath my favorite t-shirts and toys, I keep a small sampling of my children's books. Most I bought from school book fairs. Others were from my parents or family friends. As mentioned in my title, my favorites were Disney Read-Along book-and-cassettes, although my first ones came with the little records. There is a list of titles on Wikipedia, of which I owned The Hobbit, Return of the Jedi, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Gremlins, and The Story of the Goonies (as narrated by Chunk). I owned these books before I saw any of these movies, so I had the odd experience of imagining everything (same as you do reading any book) but already having a few pictures of what the characters looked like and some settings. I have to say the movies were always better in my head compared to the real thing. From the Wikipedia list I learned that Disney's been doing book-and-CD titles since 2000. Upon clicking on the link to the official page, my heart was warmed by the re-release of E.T., which is my all-time favorite movie.

Many of my other favorites seem to share a single author, Stephen Cosgrove. Apparently he's written over 350 children's books and he has an inspiring self-publishing story on his website. Perhaps you owned something from one of his many series:

Serendipity
Treasure Trolls
DreamMaker
Bugg (I still have Snugg in "the box")
The Song of the Sea
Earth Angels
The Barely There
Favorite Fairy Tales
The Whimsies (I still have Gobble and Gulp)
Snuffin Chronicles
The Simple Folk
Bear and Bunny Boards
FlutterByes
T. Wheedle
My Angel Baby

The Horses of the Tapestry

Moby Books did "Illustrated Classic Editions" of various classics. I first saw them in, and I can't believe I've never blogged about this before, the Sears catalog. Later I saw them at Wal-Mart, but let's go back to the Sears catalog, which was one of the icons of my childhood. Every year before Christmas, our family received a phone book-sized edition that I would pore over for hours. Every new and upcoming toy or clothing style I knew of, I learned about in the Sears catalog. Anyway, Moby Books were my first exposure to classic literature. They had alternating pages of text and illustrations. As far as I can tell, their adaptations were the most faithful of I've seen for children's books. The Man in the Iron Mask is the most horrific story in all of classic literature but reading this book helped me make at least a bit of sense out of it. A few other books that I've saved in "the box" are from the 12 All-time Best Fairy Tales: Rumpelstiltskin, The Three Little Pigs, Hansel & Gretel, Goldilocks & the Three Bears, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty, Jack & the Beanstalk, Snow White, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Ruth Ainsworth. They are beautiful watercolor retellings with lots of expressive faces and mushrooms (yes, even magical mushrooms).