The Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Stamp Book is actually a combination colouring book and sticker album. But that would have made for a long title on the cover so… Stamp Book it is!

I usually won’t buy a colouring book that has been coloured in as I’ve yet to find a budding child Picasso who has stayed within the lines. And if a sticker book has the stickers already affixed, I also usually take a pass. But this example is from 1958 and that dating trumped those two strikes.

On the positive side, the stickers depict artistic renderings of key scenes from the 1959 movie which are beautifully (and thus, appropriately) rendered. All 48 stickers are included, with none missing.

To begin, the reader is asked to separate the gummed stamps and affix them where they belong throughout the storybook. In the image on the right, above, you can just barely see the perforations where the sticker pages were in the spine of the book.

Annie North Bedford was primarily responsible to adapt the original story from the movie into a more condensed version for the book. Four other persons assisted.

The images above and below show sample pages with excerpts from the text and displays of some of the stickers.

Many of the images on the stickers seem to depict exact scenes from the movie but are done in an art style more reminiscent of the concept sketches that would have been used to explore the final look of the production. They are not ‘screen captures’, so to speak.

This Stamp Book was released a full year before the movie to drum up interest in the release. Disneyland already had the Sleeping Beauty Castle as its centerpiece in the Magic Kingdom since 1955. But the more Walt could promote an up-coming project the better!

For more fun with stickers, check out Mickey Mouse on a Scooter, featuring the Vespa from Luca.