smelling flowers. Publication The book's first run by Viking Press in 1936 sold 14,000 copies at $1 each. The following year saw sales increase to 68,000 and by 1938, the book was selling at 3,000 per week. That year, it outsold Gone with the Wind to become the number one best seller in the United States. As of 2019 the book has never been out of print. The book has been translated into more than sixty languages. In 1962, a Latin translation, Ferdinandus Taurus, was published by David McKay Publications in New York and by Hamish Hamilton in London. A first-edition copy sold at auction for $16,500 in 2014. Reception In 1938, Life magazine called Ferdinand "the greatest juvenile classic since Winnie the Pooh and suggested that "three out of four grownups buy the book largely for their own pleasure and amusement". The article also noted that Ferdinand was accused of being a political symbol, noting that "too-subtle readers see in Ferdinand everything from a fascist to a pacifist to a burlesque sit-down striker". Others labelled the work "as promoting fascism, anarchism, and communism". The Cleveland Plain Dealer "accused the book of corrupting the youth of America" while The New York Times downplayed the possible political allegories, insisting the book was about being true to oneself. The book was released less than two months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and was seen by many supporters of Francisco Franco as a pacifist book. It was banned in many countries, including in Spain (where it remained banned until after Franco's death). In Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler ordered the book burned (as "degenerate democratic propaganda"), while it was the only American children's book available for sale in Cold War era Poland. It received particular praise from Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Gandhi, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Following the 1945 defeat of Germany during the Second World War, 30,000 copies were quickly published and given out for free to the country's children. In the United States, the book was so popular with the public in the 1930s that it was used in various commercial products, from toys to Post Toasties breakfast cereal. Disney made it into an animated short in 1938, which became a classic and was the basis for Ferdinand the Bull, based on 'The Story of Ferdinand' by Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson (Whitman Publishing Co., 1938), Walt