Millions of Cats was published by Coward-McCann in 1928. It is the oldest American picture book still in print — nearly a century of continuous publication — and a landmark in the history of children’s literature: the book that established the picture book as an art form in America, with text and image integrated into a single visual-narrative design rather than existing as separate elements.
A very old man and a very old woman are lonely. They want a cat. The old man goes over hills and through valleys to find one — and finds not one but “hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats.” Unable to choose, he brings them all home. The cats, asked which is the prettiest, fight among themselves until only one remains — the homeliest kitten, overlooked because no one considered it beautiful enough to quarrel over. The old couple takes it in; it becomes beautiful through love and care.
Gág’s innovation was design: she hand-lettered the text (in a flowing cursive that becomes part of the visual composition), drew the illustrations in a continuous flowing style that carries the reader’s eye across the double-page spread, and conceived each opening as a unified visual field rather than a page of text facing a page of pictures. The rolling hills through which the old man walks are depicted in undulating black-and-white lines that echo the rhythmic repetition of the text — “Cats here, cats there, / Cats and kittens everywhere.”
The refrain — “Hundreds of cats, / Thousands of cats, / Millions and billions and trillions of cats” — has the hypnotic quality of genuine oral literature: children memorize it instantly and demand its repetition, which is how folk tales survive.
Gág (pronounced “Gog”) was a printmaker trained at the Minneapolis School of Art and the Art Students League. Her aesthetic — influenced by German Expressionism and European folk art — was deliberately anti-commercial: handmade, personal, rooted in the tradition of the Volksmärchen rather than in the slick commercial illustration of her era.
Collecting Millions of Cats
First edition (Coward-McCann, New York, 1928): Cloth binding with pictorial paste-on. No dust jacket issued (or extremely rare).
Market values:
- First edition (1928, fine condition): $500–$1,500
- Good condition with wear: $150–$400
- Signed copies (rare): $1,000–$3,000
- Later printings (pre-1950): $30–$75
The most important American picture book of the pre-Sendak era and one of the foundations of the genre. Fine first editions are genuinely rare — the cloth boards and paste-on label are vulnerable to wear, and nearly a century of children’s handling has destroyed most copies.