Friday, February 06, 2009



I have finally received yesterday the book Walt Disney Animation Studios The Archives Series: Story and this allows me to publish my now traditional "top 5" yearly selection of Disney History related books. Those are what I consider the 5 best Disney History related books of 2008.

I find it particularly interesting that the first two books on my list reflect a clear tendency when it comes to Disney history books: one is all text, the other one only visuals. Both are great books - and commercial as well as legal reasons govern this separation between "church and state" - but one longs for the marvelously balanced Canemaker books where text and illustrations are both of strong value in a single volume.

I am biased, of course, as this is Disney research at its best and you all know how addicted I am to this.


The ARL is finally opening its vaults and is doing it beautifully. This is a "must-have" no question whatsoever about it.


Disney's Lost Chords 2 by Russell Schroeder
Frankly, the three first choices on this list should be sharing the "best Disney history book of the year award".


As I mentioned in my review, this is not a perfect book (I would have loved to see illustrations that we had not seen before) but it is a critical reference book that should make it on all the bookshelves of serious Disney enthusiasts.


Problematic book, but the illustrations are fascinating and never-seen-before.


To this top 5, I should add two books that have a special, "out of competition" status:

The Pixar and Disney stories are obviously linked and have now merged, so this is a "must read".


Working for Disney: 1936-1937, the Ingeborg Willy Scrapbook from The Cowan Collection by Bob Cowan
Was in-print for so short a time that we can't really consider it as having been published, unfortunately.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Those are great titles, indeed.

I am surprised at how amazinng the Archives book is--even without many words!

Sébastien Durand said...

May I add that if this list was published on a blog "not owned by Didier Ghez", one would have had to include the two Walt's People volumes that you pblished in 2008!

SD

Sébastien Durand said...

May I add that if this list was published on a blog "not owned by Didier Ghez", one would have had to include the two Walt's People volumes that you pblished in 2008!

SD