Impressions: What Ever Happened to Green Tiger Press?

Green Tiger Press was a publishing company well known for its high quality, vintage styled children’s books. They have since been acquired by Laughing Elephant, a retail outlet which strives for the same values.

If you are aware of the book series Good Dog Carl, you are aware of the publishing company Green Tiger Press. When I was growing up, my shelves were stocked full of Green Tiger’s books, from Hansel and Gretel to The Rising of the Wind. A common theme through all of them was the artistry that went into the publication- the art was complex and imaginative; I remember staring at a single page for over twenty minutes as a little girl, just memorizing the warm and intricate strokes of the brush.

My father has a bit of a hobby regarding Green Tiger Press. Ever since they were acquired by Laughing Elephant, a retail company that tries to maintain the original feel of the books and preserve their one-of-a-kind presence, he has been collecting as many of their old titles as he can. Participating vicariously through him, I am able to re-experience the stories that fostered my imagination as a child, and long desperately for that sort of love and care to be returned to the children’s book industry of this generation.

Of course, there are still some of those precious books that come out every couple of years, but in an industry now controlled mostly by its bottom line, what books will get movie deals, and mega-stores, I feel that the precious intimacy that a book can have, as taught to me by Green Tiger Press’s books, has been lost. Can we ever get it back?