Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Pen & Sword Publishing, and author Andrew Stanley Kiste for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

There have been numerous books written about Walt Disney over the years. Is there a need for another? Andrew Stanley Kiste said yes and wrote this book, which is more about the animation process and the innovations he made in the early days of animation technology. Coming at this book as a child who grew up with Disney movies at the local theater in the summer, I was surprised to learn that a number of films that are now considered to be classics didn’t do so well with critics or audiences when they were first released.

Kiste dives into Walt’s background, but it’s not a biography. This is provided to show where his innovations and inspiration came from. Walt was a dreamer, and his dreams fit perfectly into the time he lived. Walt also learned from his mistakes, such as losing the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It was after this that he and his brother Roy built their own studio and innovated over and over again in the field of animation.

There’s a lot of technical information in How Walt Disney Changed Animation Forever. Some of it was lost on me, but the many challenges that Disney put out there during the creative process allowed for the innovations as the movie industry evolved in the first half of the 10th century. It was astounding to realize, before computers, that everything was hand-drawn. It wasn’t one artist who crafted a film or a character, but hundreds. Often, they didn’t receive credit in the film itself. Walt prided himself on running a studio more like a family, but some of the artists there didn’t feel that way.

All this and more is what makes up How Walt Disney Changed Animation Forever. It makes for a good overview of animation history in general, and how Walt changed the entire industry with his ideas and vision. There are personal anecdotes in here as well, but the focus is mostly on the studio and the animation it produced.

I found the book to be interesting, although a bit dry of a read. I put it down more than I usually do a book I’m reading, but I always came back to it. The subject is interesting, and Kiste has done an incredible amount of research, which he presents quite well. There’s a lot of information about the challenges Walt’s vision for stories presented, as well as the missteps and successes during the process. I was most interested in what the studio produced during the Second World War. I knew about some of the shorts, but there were many animated shorts produced for private companies as well.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that there aren’t many people who wouldn’t say that Disney changed animation forever. He was a visionary and a dreamer. The technology would likely have been developed eventually, but Disney was ahead of everyone else at the time. From Snow White through Bambi and more, he changed the way people looked at animation, and never cut corners to do so.