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Getting past the check out with kids can be hard these days, with candies placed for maximum tanrtum factor. But when I was a kid, we didn't see candies within temptation's reach - we saw Little Golden Books.

The familiar stand was placed near every supermarket check out, where little fingers could preuse the books while mother waited in line. Begging for a book rarely met with a refusal.

A Little Golden Book was the perfect shopping day treat. It wouldn't rot your teeth, or spoil your dinner, and we kids just loved them. Better yet, they were as cheap as the cheapest candy, a shilling or two in the UK, and 25 cents in the US.

I gravitated to the revolving book stand every time, rummaging through the titles to see what was new, or what I didn't have in my collection. It was of course the brightly colored covers and illustrations that attracted me, but the books themselves were also well produced, with durable covers, and good stories.

I gathered on my small bookshelf such titles as The Little Engine That Could, Heidi, The Poky Little Puppy, Scuffy the Tugboat and Cinderella. But there was one name on a Little Golden Book guaranteed to raise my spirits.

Eloise Wilkin was an illustrator with a magical touch. Her children were rosy cheeked, solid and adorable. You could almost imagine them talking to you. But it was the detail in her books that most enchanted me. Eloise created perfect worlds for her characters, rooms filled with toys and furniture, patterned wallpaper and curtains blowing in the breeze, frilly bed linen and dainty pictures on the walls.

Not for Eloise the broad sweet of color indicating a field of wildflowers. Each flower was carefully detailed - daisies, clover,buttercups - woven into a coronet on a little girl's head.

the incredible luminosity and detail of her illustrations has never been equalled. They were a joy for a child to discover. You could look at them again and again and always discover something new - a tiny object on a dressing table, a view from the window, a puppy peeping out.

She worked for Little Golden Books from before I was born until 1961. One of my favorite books was her Where Did the Baby Go? A little girl finds a photo of a baby in her house, and goes searching for the little one. She discovers that it is a photo of herself as a baby.

The utter simplicity of this beautiful little story with its gorgeous illustrations still enchants me. This was Eloise Wilkin's gift - to be able to record those special moments of childhood.

Today, more than two billions books later, Little Golden Books is still going strong. I have been able to find some of those vintage titles for my grandchildren, and like me, they love Eloise Wilkin, and do you know - I can still find something new in those wonderful drawings.

Learn more about this author, Gail Kavanagh.
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