Illustrations for The Little Red Hen, the children's story created by Andy Warhol, go under the hammer Dec. 9 in New York.

The drawings, created between 1957 and 1959 for a children's storybook, show almost no signs of the pop artist's later style.

Warhol, known for his screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and tins of soup, usually produced large images in often lurid colours.

His illustrations for the story of the industrious little red hen who sows wheat grains to illustrate the virtues of hard work, features a perky hen outlined in black with a splash of red and other farm animals looking on.

It will be auctioned by Bloomsbury Auction House in New York alongside pictures and letters from Arthur Rackham, Maurice Sendak and Roald Dahl.

At total of 365 original illustrations and books are to be sold, including a privately printed edition of Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester and the estate of award-winning African American children's illustrator Tom Feelings.

There is also a rare edition of Sendak's first picture book, Good Shabbos, Everybody, and a poster he drew for the 1979 New York book festival, showing a Wild Thing relaxing against the Empire State Building. A price of $35,000 to $45,000 US has been set for a pencil study of a Wild Thing, the character from Where the Wild Things Are, created by Sendak.

Warhol's illustrations are expected to attract a modest $500 to $600 US each, unlike his pop art silk screens, which can sell for millions.

His painting 200 One Dollar Bills, one of his first silk-screen creations, sold at auction for $43.8 million US last week in New York.