I am really looking forward to receiving this newly released autobiography.
 

Dave Bossert's upcoming book about The House of the Future is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

I am afraid the news is not great when it comes to Jim Korkis.

Please follow this link for more details and information about how you can help.

Great Disney auction coming up on Heritage Auctions in just a few weeks.
 

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Lou Mongello on WDW Radio. Enjoy the podcast at this link!

The last time I went to the cinema was right before the pandemic, which is way too long.

I am finally planning to go back and the first movie my wife and I will catch is Elemental. I loved the clip I saw at D23 Expo last year and sense that this will be a winner.

I just received The Art of Elemental, released by Chronicle Books, and that beautiful volume confirmed my first impression.

I am really looking forward to this!

Two new exhibition catalogs from the Netherlands that I just discovered thanks to artist Henrieke Goorhuis. I am not yet sure about how to order them.

 

 

This book could be interesting. We will see...

 An upcoming book announced this week by Don Ballard. I am looking forward to it.

I just became aware of the release of this new exhibition catalog (in Italian). 

More about this when I receive my own copy in a few weeks.

Looking for something else today, I stumbled upon this great selection of 1930s songs related to Disney that I think you will enjoy!

If you read Italian, this new book by Alberto Becattini is likely to be a must-have!
 

 The Disney Books Network has been updated today.

The 27th volume of Walt's People was released yesterday!
 

Some really, really fun stuff in there. Here is the table of contents:

Brian Sibley and Richard Holliss: Joe Grant

Tadhg Murphy’s 1946 Diaries

Larry Watkin: Leprechaun Land

Tadhg Murphy’s 1947 Diaries

Mary Wilmar: I Love Polar Bears

Anne Papineau: Eyvind Earle

Didier Ghez: Joe Alves

Bob Thomas: Luther Marr

Bob Thomas: Harry Archinal

Bob Thomas: Dick Morrow

Michael Broggie: John Hench

John G. West: Ken Annakin

Jim Korkis: Rock Hall

Jim Korkis: Tom Morris

Didier Ghez: Ron Carman

Didier Ghez: Paul Torrigino

Didier Ghez: Randy Cartwright

Didier Ghez: Ed Ghertner

I just received this new version of Walt Disney -- An American Original and loved reading the commemorative essays written by Walt's grandson Christopher Miller as well as by my friends Becky Cline and Marcy Carriker Smothers.

Finally!!!

This is the Walt Disney quote book that I had been forward to: extremely well-researched by the staff of the Walt Disney Archives and complete with a precise list of the sources where the quotes come from (which for me is the best part of this publication).

Way to go to Disney Editions for releasing this important volume.

VOLUNTEER NEEDED IN MEXICO CITY

We all know about Walt Disney and El Grupo's trip to Latin America in 1941. But did you know that Walt and / or some of his artists went back to Latin America (especially to Mexico) in 1942 and 1943?

JB Kaufman, Ted Thomas and I are slowly starting to dig deeper into those later trips, and for this we need a volunteer in Mexico City, to help conduct some in-person research at the Hemeroteca Nacional and at the Archivo General de la Nacion, where we know that great photos and documents about the 1942 trip are preserved.

If you are based in Mexico City and willing to help, could you please email me at didier.ghez@gmail.com? 

Oh no, Rolly Crump just passed away.
 

Fun auction coming up via Heritage Auctions on March 25.

Dust Bowl to Disney - The Lost Memoir of Danny Alguire is now available on Amazon!

Oh, no! Burny Mattinson just passed away. He was a few months shy of celebrating his 70th anniversary with Disney Animation.
 

 I love this new book project and decided to back it.

I spent some time on Friday signing 98 copies of "The Origins of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures." If you would like to pick up a signed copy, I would encourage you to contact Stuart Ng Books ASAP. (https://stuartngbooks.com/)

My good friend David Peake just spotted quite a few upcoming books that are now available for pre-order on Amazon:

- JB Kaufman, Worlds to Conquer: The Art & Making of Walt Disney's Fantasia (Weldon Owen, 2023).

-  Dave Bossert, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas Visual Companion (Disney Editions, 2023).

- Emily Zemler, Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Beyond Halloween Town: The Story, the Characters, and the Legacy (Epic Ink, 2023).

- Disney: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (Canterbury Classics, 2023).

- Greg Glasgow and Kathryn Mayer, Disneyland on the Mountain: Walt, the Environmentalists, and the Ski Resort That Never Was (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023).

- Jim Fanning and Andreas Deja, Drawing 100 Years of Disney Wonder (Walter Foster Publishing, 2023).

- - Simon Beecroft, Disney Museum: Celebrate 100 Years of Wonder! (Studio Press, 2023).

 

 A note from Jim Korkis' brother:

[Jim Korkis wanted to let you know that he is in Osceola Regional hospital in Kissimmee, Florida.  He’s  been there a couple of days testing and looks like he’ll have open heart surgery in the next couple of days. 

A separate issue he said is that is internet has been out since Dec. 16th due to a technical issue. He asked if you would get the word out so people know he’s safe and keep him in thoughts and prayers.]

 Looking forward to this!

I was interviewed on the Skull Rock podcast right before the holidays about The Origins of Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures and the interview has just been posted at this link. Enjoy!

A few years back, while researching the fifth volume of the They Drew as They Pleased -- The Hidden Art of Disney book series, I stumbled upon the lost autobiography of Disney artist and musician Danny Alguire.

Over the past three years, jazz historian Hal Smith, myself and Lucas Seastrom (who is a Disney historian, a specialist of the Firehouse Five Plus Two and a jazz historian) have been working on getting the book into print. Lucas served as the principal editor on this project and, thanks to BearManor Media, the book has now been released, just in time for the holidays!!!

This book has finally been released in English.

It contains a great article by my friend and fellow Disney historian Ross Care: a discussion of how the Le Sacre score was adapted, rearranged, and slightly cut for Fantasia.

An FYI from Andreas Deja for Disney history enthusiasts in France.
 

I just received this wonderful new book (in Italian) about Disney comic book legend Giorgio Cavazzano. It is marvelously illustrated and is a must-have for all my Italian friends who love Disney comics.

I realize that Made of Pen & Ink: Fleischer Studios The New York Years is not a book about Disney, but I know that many of you will want to know about its recent release. I just ordered it and will find out soon how good it is.

I can't wait for Heritage Auctions' upcoming auction in a few days. 

Two of my favorite oddball items are these two Mickey Mouse drawings attributed to Tom Wood for the unreleased Red Book magazine spread Mickey Mouse on Inflation.

 

I am really looking forward to Pixar's Elemental and I will definitely want to pick up The Art of Elemental when it is released by Chronicle Books.

 YES!!!!!

Amazing Disney auction coming up soon, courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

When I received The Disney Animation Renaissance yesterday, I first read the short biography of the author. I learned that Mary E. Lescher worked as a cameraperson and scene planner for Walt Disney Feature Animation. I also discovered that she passed away back in 2019 and will not be able to see her book released, which I found to be very sad.

Especially because her history of Disney's Floridian studio, based on dozens of first-hand interviews, is a fascinating one and deserves to be kept among the best books about recent Disney history. I can't wait to read it from cover to cover.

This has been a really good year for Disney history.

 

I am not sure if I will like the movie Strange World, but what I can already tell you is that I love the book The Art of Strange World, which contains some stunning artwork by Paul Felix, Mike Gabriel, Craig Elliott and Don Hall, but also by Larry Wu, Tadahiro Uesugi and Scott Watanabe, whose style I adore. 
 

This art book, released for the 30 years of Disneyland Paris is full of amazing concept art (complete with additional info and credits) and is definitely a "must have"!

A few years ago, my good friend Joe Campana and I had the pleasure of locating rare movie footage shot at Disney's Hyperion studio by animator Frenchy de Trémaudan. Along with that outstanding footage (including shots of Walt Disney and his artists studying live penguins while preparing to work on "Peculiar Penguins") we also unearthed biographical notes and a marvelous scrapbook full of caricatures and gag drawings by Frenchy and his many colleagues. 

It took close to 5 years and the efforts of Joe Campana, Steve and Virginia Reeser, Lucas Seastrom, Jenna Benton, Mike Vaughn, Jim Hollifield and J.B. Kaufman, to organize all of this material and present it in book form... a massive 300-pages, full-color book.

It is finally available on Amazon. 

If you have friends who love Disney history and own everything released on the subject, you could not find a better gift for them this holiday season.

I have been looking forward to the released of Robert Neuman's book From Hollywood to Disneyland for a long time and when I got my copy earlier today I was not disappointed.

From the little I have read until now and based on the quantity and the quality of the endnotes, I am already confirmed that this book is a "must have" and a "must read," especially if you are interested in the early days of Disneyland or in the influence of American movies on the Happiest Place on Earth.

Kuddos to Robert Neuman and his publisher McFarland! 

 Sad news: Alice Davis (1929 - 2022)

Leslie Iwerks' new book The Imagineering Story is a masterpiece, which comes as no surprise.

What is astonishing is the fact that this 700+ book is not an art book. This is wonderful and (to me at least until D23 Expo) totally unexpected news. In other words, those 700+ pages are practically pure text. Hurrah!

In addition, Leslie does something that I love: she focuses on the men and women of Imagineering. He book is mostly based on interviews.

This means that, like Leslie's documentary on Disney+, from a historical standpoint, the book becomes stronger and more detailed as it progresses closer to our time period.

I suspect that to understand in detail the full story of Walt Disney Imagineering one will need to read both Leslie Iwerks' massive volume, as well as Tom Morris' upcoming series of 4 monographs about the early days of Imagineering (to be released by the Hyperion Historical Alliance Press).

Between the two of them they are in the process of revolutionizing our understanding of Imagineering history.

 

The second volume of my good friend Christian Renaut's book series The Best of Disney's Animated Features has just been released. Congratulations!

Disney Editions outdid themselves this year. Their Holidays line-up is absolutely spectacular. I just received three new books from them which are all winners in their respective categories. I will review all three here over the next few days.

Let's start with the one that surprised me the most: Poster Art of the Disney Parks -- Second Edition is not just a slightly updated version of the 2012 book. With an additional 100 pages (!!) this is really a brand-new book. More text, more illustrations, more information and way, way more posters, including development artwork for those posters. This is the kind of book I was hoping for in 2012. Better late than never.

In other words: I was blown away by this volume. Definitely a "must-have" and a great gift for the Holidays.

And, in exclusivity, here are a few interior pages from Pierre Lambert's upcoming book about Peter Pan!

 

Notably Disney just released an interview with me about the making of The Origins of Walt Disney's True-Life Adventures. Enjoy!