The early life of Walt Disney and how he came to create his world-famous animated characters
If you traveled to Pakistan or possibly Timbuctoo you could probably meet a few people who have never heard of Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. But you'd really have to work very hard to find them. However, even those of us who have followed the adventures of Mickey and Donald for many years know litle about their ereator. The Disney characters are so real to us all that we often forget they are the lively figments of one man's imagination.
HOW Mickey Mouse grew from a shy little cartoon character to a world-famous figure is one of the most amazing real life stories.
It is the story of Walt Disney and how he created Mickey and other movie fable heroes beloved by boys and girls and their families in our own and many other lands.
And a lot of it has to do with what happened in Walt's own boyhood. How he learned to draw; what he and his young friends thought was funny; what he expected to do when he grew up; his experiences in amateur shows; his study of animals on the farm, and how comically they often looked and acted like people; his learning to observe everything around him clearly; and remembering these things so plainly that he could sketch them accurately, or change them into cartoons.
Walt Disney grew up in the middle of America.
Part of his boyhood was spent not far from the home of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The father of Mickey Mouse is the son of Elias Disney, a building contractor of Irish and German pioneer stock. Walt was born in Chicago. The family then moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri, and then to Kansas City, where Walt, his three brothers and a sister, went to grammar school.
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