User:Rudolphrednose

Publication history
Robert L. May created Rudolph in 1939, as an assignment for Chicago-based Montgomery Ward. The retailer had been buying and giving away coloring books for Christmas every year and it was decided that creating their own book would save money. Rudolph was supposed to be a moose but that was changed because a reindeer seemed friendly.[citation needed] May considered naming the reindeer "Rollo" or "Reginald" before deciding upon using the name "Rudolph".[7] In its first year of publication, Montgomery Ward had distributed 2.5 million copies of Rudolph's story.[8] The story is written as a poem in anapestic tetrameter, the same meter as "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (also known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas").[citation needed] Publication and reprint rights for the book Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are controlled by Pearson PLC[citation needed].

Of note is the change in the cultural significance of a red nose. In popular culture, a bright red nose was then closely associated with chronic alcoholism and drunkards, and so the story idea was initially rejected. May asked his illustrator friend at Montgomery Ward, Denver Gillen, to draw "cute reindeer", using zoo deer as models. The alert, bouncy character Gillen developed convinced management to support the idea.[9]

Maxton Books published the first mass-market edition of Rudolph[citation needed] and a sequel, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Shines Again, in 1954.[citation needed] In 1991, Applewood Books published Rudolph's Second Christmas, an unpublished sequel that Robert May wrote in 1947.[citation needed] In 2003, Penguin Books issued a reprint version of the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with new artwork by Lisa Papp.[citation needed] Penguin also reprinted May's sequels, Rudolph Shines Again and Rudolph's Second Christmas (now retitled Rudolph to the Rescue)