Bob Marshall: Defender of the Wilderness Part One
Selected for Great Reads from Great Places
Hello friends!
Today I wanted to share the process of illustrating Bob Marshall: Defender of the Wilderness by Linda Elovitz Marshall. Recently, we got the news that the book has been chosen as this year’s Great Reads from Great Places children selection! The Montana Center for the book chooses two books every year to take to the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. as part of the Roadmap to Reading program. The other book chosen for our Montana region is The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, by Debra Magpie Earling.
This is pretty exciting news and it reminded me that I hadn’t yet really shared the process of making this book other than posting a few time lapse videos about the process over on my youtube. In addition, I interviewed the author, Linda Elovitz Marshall over on my blog.
So I’ll be making a series of short posts here about the process. I hope you will enjoy reading about the first step below!
“All his life, Bob Marshall craved adventure and being in nature. He knew and liked how different the city was from the wilderness. He also understood the importance of both. Bob was born in New York City in 1901 into a German-Jewish family. Outside his window, taxis honked and buses belched smoky air. But when summer came, Bob and his family left the city for the Adirondack Mountains. There, his parents taught him to identify plants, to love and cherish nature, and to fight for civil rights.
Bob learned these lessons well. He decided that he would protect the wild places from the cars, trucks, and trains that threatened them. His college studies of forestry and environmental science and Ph.D. in plant physiology led Bob to jobs with the U.S. Forest Service and as Chief of Forestry with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1935, Bob joined with like-minded folks to form The Wilderness Society, eventually resulting in the Wilderness Act of 1964.
Entirely through his own efforts, Bob Marshall saved five million acres of American wilderness. Alongside others, he contributed to the protection of over 110 million acres of wilderness. Though he died young, at the age of 38, Bob’s dedication to preserving the wild places left a lasting legacy. Thanks to Bob Marshall, there are still places in America where people can listen to the wind in the trees, scramble up a mountain, and perhaps spot a grizzly cub (or two).”
So, what’s the first step after signing the contract, celebrating, and then realizing you have a WHOLE lot of work to do?
RESEARCH!
Personally, research is maybe my favorite part. I love looking into the subjects I am going to illustrate and learning more about the time in which they lived. I was super lucky that Bob is a very well known figure, so there was lots of information about him that was easily accessible. In addition, Bob was an avid photographer and took many photos of his family and his hikes in the wilderness. Here are some of my favorite photos:
You can find more photos of him and his family in this collection.
Bob was a really interesting guy to read about. He has rather “eccentric,” keeping lists of statistics for things that were really absolutely useless, such as how many times the loggers he worked with swore, and what kinds of swears they favored. One man said that Bob was quite smart, but absolutely worthless with his tools. “He used his thermometer like an ax and his ax like a thermometer.” He also could not seem to sit still for long. He would often happily head out for all day hikes up mountains, which he would then excitedly gallop down. He was a bit of a playful soul, and wrote a series of entertaining letters about his time in Alaska which you can read here.
Bob wrote papers and books about his adventures mountaineering, including Arctic Village, The People’s Forests, and The High Peaks of the Adirondacks. You can read more about him in two biographies: A Wilderness Original: The Life of Bob Marshall by James M. Glover and Bob Marshall in the Adirondacks edited by Phil Brown.
In addition to learning about Bob, I also got to learn a lot about the time period in which he lived. Bob was born in 1901 and died in 1939. His lifetime encapsulated the Edwardian Era, WWI, The Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the tensions leading up to WWII.
In addition, I got to virtually visit places I have never seen in real life. Google Maps allowed me to explore several areas in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and multiple places in the Adirondacks. Thanks to people adding photo spots, I also got to explore around Wiseman, Alaska!
There were many other smaller things I needed to research- like how the logging industry worked on federal land, and what regular objects looked like in Bob’s life. I collected hundreds and hundreds of photos. But I hope what I have shown you so far gives you an idea of the research phase. In the next post, I’ll share how I composed the images for the story!
If you have any questions about this process, I’d love to chat!
Thanks for reading!
P.S If you are curious about what other books got picked for the Great Reads from Great Places you can find that list below:
The 2024 Great Reads for Kids are:
Alabama: Charles Ghigna, “The Father Goose Treasury of Poetry: 101 Favorite Poems for Children”
Alaska: Nasugraq Rainey Hopson, “Eagle Drums”
American Samoa: Marilyn Down, “Tasi of American Samoa”
Arizona: Phoebe Fox, “On the Verde River”
Arkansas: Cathy Melvin, “Cypress Knees and Tupelo Trees: Discovering Plants and Animals of the Swamp”
California: Lilliam Rivera, “Barely Floating”
Colorado: Meg Long, “Cold The Night, Fast The Wolves”
Connecticut: Cindy L. Rodriguez, “Three Pockets Full”
Delaware: Michelle Meadows, “Flying High: The Story of Gymnastics Champion Simone Biles (Who Did It First?)”
District of Columbia: Leah Henderson, “Your Voice, Your Vote”
Florida: Sara E. Echenique, “Our Roof Is Blue”
Georgia: Mo Netz, “The Lumbering Giants of Windy Pines”
Guam: Oliver Sacks, “The Island of the Colorblind”
Hawaii: Kaylin Melia George, “Aloha Everything”
Idaho: Randy'L Teton, “It's Her Story: Sacajawea”
Illinois: Sarah Aronson, “Abzuglutely!: Battling, Bellowing Bella Abzug”
Indiana: Gabrielle Balkan, “What a Map Can Do”
Iowa: Molly Griffin, “Ten Beautiful Things”
Kansas: Grant Snider, “One Boy Watching”
Kentucky: Brittany J. Thurman, “Forever and Always”
Louisiana: Ruby Bridges, “I Am Ruby Bridges”
Maine: Maryann Cocca-Leffler, “Fighting for Yes!: The Story of Disability Rights Activist Judith Heumann”
Maryland: Rosa Chang, “My Indigo World: A True Story of the Color Blue”
Massachusetts: Linda Coombs, “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story”
Michigan: Katie Yamasaki, “Shapes, Lines and Light: My Grandfather's American Journey”
Minnesota: Cori Doerrfeld, “Beneath”
Mississippi: Alice Faye Duncan, “Traveling Shoes: The Story of Willye White, U.S. Olympian and Long Jump Champion”
Missouri: Pedro Martín, “Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir”
Montana: Linda Elovitz Marshall, “Bob Marshall: Defender of the Wilderness”
Nebraska: James Solheim, “Eat Your Woolly Mammoths!: Two Million Years of the World's Most Amazing Food Facts, from the Stone Age to the Future”
Nevada: Sophie Sheppard, “The Moon’s Tear: A Desert Night’s Dream”
New Hampshire: Amy Makechnie, “The McNifficents”
New Jersey: Wendy Mass, “Lo & Behold”
New Mexico: Daniel W. Vandever, “Herizon”
New York: George Sleden, “Cricket in Times Square”
North Carolina: Eileen Heyes, “Bountiful Red Acres: Two Farms, Two Families, and A Year on the Land”
North Dakota: Lindsey Undlin, “Sprial”
Northern Marianas: Adora Jay San Nicolas, “Hafa Sinentete-mu?”
Ohio: Chiquita Mullins Lee and Carmella Van Vleet, “You Gotta Meet Mr. Pierce! The Storied Life of Folk Artist Elijah Pierce”
Oklahoma: Eddie Chuculate, “This Indian Kid: A Native American Memoir”
Oregon: Dane Liu, “Laolao's Dumplings”
Pennsylvania: Kelly Starling Lyons, “Ty's Travels: Camp-Out”
Puerto Rico: Sara Gavrell Ortiz, “La coquí nómada y el mar de estrellas” (Spanish version) / “Lani: the Nomad Coquí and the Sea of Stars” (English version)
Rhode Island: Hayley Rocco, “Wild Places:The Life of Naturalist David Attenborough”
South Carolina: Varian Johnson, “The Parker Inheritance”
South Dakota: Billy Mills & Donna Janell Bowman, “Wings of an Eagle: The Gold Medal Dreams of Billy Mills”
Tennessee: Savannah Allen, “The Nature Journal: A Backyard Adventure”
Texas: Barb Rosenstock, “The Mystery of the Monarchs: How Kids, Teachers and Butterfly Fans Helped Fred and Norah Urquhart Track the Great Monarch Migration”
Utah: Ally Condie, “Matched”
Vermont: Dan Nott, “Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day”
U.S. Virgin Islands: CM Rohan, “Ziggy on the Rock”
Virginia: Kelly Ann Jacobson, “Robin and Her Misfits”
Washington: Ellie Peterson, “How to Hug a Pufferfish”
West Virginia: Marc Harshman & Anna Egan Smucker, “Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright's Masterpiece”
Wisconsin: Maria Parrott-Ryan, “Mysterious Glowing Mammals: An Unexpected Discovery Sparks a Scientific Investigation”
Wyoming: Catherine Barr, “The Wolves of Yellowstone: A Rewilding Story”
If you liked this, you can find more of my work on my instagram here!
Wow, Jeanne!! Great work! I love the research you shared & how kind of you to share the whole list of books. Congrats to you!! Well deserved!