This is inspired by the Childhood Delights thread on Cafe Society. When I was a kid I inherited a field guide with mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and marine invertebrates from my older brother. I loved it to death. It just fell apart from being opened and closed so much. A month or so ago I had a dream about it, and decided to see if I could look it up on line. I grew up to be a librarian, so it took me all of a minute even though I didn’t remember the title. Here it is: Vintage Book Complete Field Guide to American Wildlife, 1959 Colorful Graphics | eBay
The one I ordered was in better shape than this one, and it was one of those rare things from childhood that was as good as I remembered. One weird thing is the range covered. The animals have to live north of the NC/SC border and east of the Rockies, but can range all the way to the North Pole. Fish that were introduced in the range covered (called “our area” by the author) are included, so salmon species from the west coast that have been introduced make the cut, as do goldfish. Walruses, Musk Oxen, and Polar Bears are also included. Many entries include personal reminisces by the author, or just random comments. One I had remembered was for the Hammerhead Shark; “Look what happened this time when Triton blew his wreathed horn!” My wife said I look very serious when reading it.
I found a copy of Mammals of the Great Lakes Region last year and read it pretty much cover to cover. There are so many interesting creatures out there. I’m still on the lookout for some local flying squirrels, I’ve never spotted one in person.
Looks like a great book. I had the insects field guide and used it a lot also. I have a much rarer guide today, “Golf Car Classics” and have emailed a few times to the author, Ron Lyons.
I recently re-discovered a book that I’d loved as a kid, after seeing it on the PBS educational program Cover to Cover, entitled The Devil’s Storybook. It’s a slim book, written ostensibly for children, with a bunch of short, funny stories about the Devil and Hell. Only in the 1970s…
One of my hobbies as a child and teenager was model rocketry. None of my old rockets survived various cleaning purges at my parents’ house. When I started back into the hobby, about 20 years ago, I was able to find “clone” instructions and kits, which allowed me to re-create the specific rockets that I’d built as a kid.
I am 72 years old and never saw a flying squirrel until… 3 years ago I drove through a ritzy neighborhood where they left the mature trees when they built the houses instead of bulldozing everything. Something caught my eye, moving up in the sky across my field of vision. I thought it was a large bird until it landed way up in one of those old trees. It scurried about a bit on those high branches, and then took flight away from me again. I always look when I drive on that street but it was a one-off I guess. This is SW Ohio outside Cincinnati
Looks like a lovely book. As a pre-teen and teenager I read tons of nature guides and kept buying them - some old, others updated** editions, well into adulthood. The Peterson guides, the Kaufman guides, a few Golden Book guides.
Illustrations from the latter were also used in the Golden Book Encyclopedia of Natural Science, another old gem. Someone once gifted me five volumes of this and a volume of a more general Golden Book children’s encyclopedia as a kid. This gave me hours of educational enjoyment. I would love to have the whole set, but have nowhere to put it at present.
** For example, there are species that were not recorded from North America in the 50s or 60s but do live there now, such as the Seven-Spotted Ladybug (very common) or the European Peacock Butterfly (likely came to Canada on ships via the St. Lawrence Seaway; small population established in Quebec and may be expanding its range). Also, scientific names of many species have changed. Example: all the Brown Bears in the world, Old and New, are now normally classified as one species (Ursus arctos). At the time of your book’s publication, it was common to classify North American Grizzly and Alaskan Brown Bears as at least two separate species: Ursus horribilis (the Grizzly) and Ursus middendorffi (the Kodiak Bear), and often other species, e.g. Ursus gyas and Ursus dalli for various Alaskan Brown Bear populations.
Things that that are so good, aren’t they? Interesting that the author’s scope was limited. It might have been printed and distributed regionally rather than nationally originally. Or maybe the author was Canadian? For some childhood stuff, a photo is enough, but other items you want your own.
We have some in Lincoln,Nebraska, specifically in the East Campus of the University of Nebraska. East Campus originally was the ag campus of the University and it still has test fields and is an arboretum.
I was pleased when my daughter sought out and bought a book of Greek Mythology which we had read to the kids when they were young.
In my 20s-30s I bought a copy of Leo Rosten’s The Education of Hyman Kaplan. Still think it one of the funniest books I’ve read. Regretted having lent it to a guy in high school and never getting it back.
