Look what I found in my mailbox this week!

This is the first physical copy of They Drew As They Pleased - The Hidden Art of Disney's Late Golden Age, which will be officially released in October this year.

I will be presenting about the secrets behind the making of this book series on Saturday, July 15, at 11.30AM on the Disney Archives stage at the D23 Expo.

The Animation Art auction by Heritage Auctions which will take place on July 1 and 2 is, as far as I can tell, the most outstanding animation art auction of all times. This is not an overstatement. It contains so many masterpieces that I do not even know where to start. Here are just a few of the highlights:

- The best piece by Kay Nielsen from Night on Bald Mountain that I have ever seen (above).

-  An incredible original drawing of Laurel and Hardy with two of the Pigs by Hank Porter.

- The complete thumbnails from the Tar Baby sequence in Song of the South by Ken Anderson!!!

- A huge collection of story drawings from the abandoned musical project On the Trail by Retta Scott.

And there is a LOT more.

Even if you do not have the money to bid on anything, you owe it to yourself to check this out.

Needless to say, I can't wait to get this new book by Pierre Lambert, which will be released in France at the end of the year...

The Business of Walt Disney by Barry Linetsky is an excellent book. It is the first real attempt at telling the whole story of Walt's career purely from a business standpoint and it definitely achieves its goal. Barry has done his homework. His book is well researched and an easy read (thankfully, since it is 578-page long). He makes excellent use of all the interviews that have been released via Walt's People over the years and of all the other books about Disney history that were not available to his predecessors.

This is therefore an excellent book to get a great overview of Disney's career and one that the casual Disney history enthusiasts will want to read right away.

When it comes to Disney historians, this book might not quite achieve what they are looking for. If you have read everything that has been written throughout the years about Disney history, then you crave books that tap into new sources of information (very rare articles, new interviews, diaries, correspondence, memos, etc.) This is not what you will find in this book. But then again, there are very, very few Disney history books that offer this these days, so this does not take away from the quality of what Linetsky has achieved.

I love Jim Korkis' books. All of them. They are light reading and I always learn something new in all of them. They are also a great starting point to make new discoveries. I find a lead there, a new quote here and this usually sparks new ideas for areas of Disney history that should be researched in depth.

Secret Stories of Disneyland, Jim's new book, released by Theme Park Press, is no exception and I was very glad to add it to my library last week.

Will you attend D23 Expo this year? If so, I am glad to say that I will be presenting on the Disney Archives stage for one hour on Saturday, July 15, at 11.30AM. The subject of the presentation:

The Hidden Art of Disney: A Behind-The-Scenes Look at the They Drew As They Pleased book series.

I am really looking forward to meeting you all there. After the presentation, I will be glad to sign your books at the booth of Saturday Toys.

For technical reasons, none of the books will be sold at the Expo, but if you bring your own copies, I will be there to personalize them.

Needless to say, I hate this book's cover design. It is, however, easy to read and very enjoyable. Target readers are not Disney historians who will not discover anything new in this volume, but the young nephew or nieces of those Disney historians who want to start getting a sense of what is so fun about Disney and Disney history. A good gift idea if you want to introduce someone to who Walt was and what makes Disneyland special.