Click on photos to enlarge

Bubble Book Cover Art

Inside of a Bubble Book 

Advertisements for Bubble Books 

 

Talking Books

One of the first advertisements for “talking books” appeared on May 15, 1919, in Talking Machine World. The books were advertised as being similar to other books but with the added benefit of pictures, stories, songs and poems. Since 1917, the Emerson Phonograph Company had been mounting plastic discs on top of illustrated books. After two years, the company began producing children’s books made out of four inch discs secured onto printed cardboard images. Most of the records had an animal motif and the record itself contained a short story or rhyme while the back of the illustrated cardboard contained information about the animal pictured as well as a written transcript. The entire packaged record was meant to be placed directly on to the turntable when played. Advertisements for the records boasted several benefits that included entertaining children, teaching them how to read and claiming that the children want them enough to drag their parents to the store to buy them.