In the decade of the 60's I bought used Big Little Books to replace the ones my Mother tossed out about 1949, in addition to the ones I never had. The first effort was what a kid did and it was pure fun and filled with moments of discovery. The latter was a collection effort while 1940-46 was, again, what a kid did . If memory serves, my wife may have mentioned that once or twice although not in recent years. Why I quit buying and acquiring Big Little Books in 1946 is because that was the time I begin to wonder why Li'l Abner Yokum was always running away from Miss Daisy Mae Scragg.
Priorities change along with hormones.
While this is not a primer on the history of Big Little Books or the publishers or the artists, I will mention that, while I employ the term Big Little Books, it is strictly generic and refers to the whole genre, and I am well aware of the other names and terms and descriptive titles. Forget the re-collection effort. That was part and parcel of a Saturday morning ritual. The next step was, for lack of a better term, the theater check. This was not to find out what was playing as the one, two and three column ads in the Avalanche-Journal supplied that information.