During the years 1942-1999, Boys’ Life, the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, published at least 20 items referring to the California condor. By doing so, this magazine reached an important audience with information about the condor.
This post offers an overview of what boy scouts learned about the California condor from their magazine during the 20th century.
Here are 8 fine illustrations of the California condor from children’s books.
Continue reading “Illustrations from books for children: 1975-2015”
The April 1948 issue of The American Girl magazine features Margaret Leighton’s short story “The Legacy of Canyon John”. A California condor is the heart of this story and one can be seen in Roy Clinker’s accompanying illustrations.
Five years later, “The Legacy of Canyon John” was reprinted in a collection of short stories and with new art work by Robert Sinnott. This multi-volume story collection, edited by Marjorie Barrows, was titled The Children’s Hour (Spencer, 1953). Leighton’s short story is in volume 7: Favorite Mystery Stories.
In this post, I describe Leighton’s story (avoiding spoilers), show the condor illustrations of Clinker and Sinnott, and note how I found the two versions of “The Legacy of Canyon John”.
I was surprised to have recently discovered the variety of trading cards devoted to animals. In this post I show 10 cards featuring the California condor.
The feature-length silent film The Night Cry premiered in 1926. The star and hero of the movie was the famous dog Rin Tin Tin, who had top billing. The villain was a California condor, who received no acknowledgment by name or photograph in the movie’s credits or on the movie’s poster.
The first post to this blog was Cover art from government documents. In this post I present art work from inside the covers of government publications.
Continue reading “Black & white illustrations from government publications”
How was knowledge of natural history conveyed to children in the past? Books can provide insights into the nature of the “environmental education” available to our great- … -grandparents.
In this post I note 3 books for younger children. Only one of these refers specifically to the California condor. As is typical for the time, the other 2 refer to the “condor”, by which they mean the Andean condor. Even in the USA, the California condor was not as well known as the Andean condor a century ago. Nevertheless, I consider all 3 books here because they each take different approaches to conveying understanding to children.
