One Day on Beetle Rock

I’m embarrassed to say that, until yesterday, I’d never before seen this paperback cover for Sally Carrighar’s One Day at Beetle Rock. Dad’s scanty records show that it was either commissioned or delivered on May 25, 1965, and that Pyramid Books paid him $300 for it. I assume the original is gouache on illustration board.

“...And a red fox in a kangaroo’s pouch...”

A 1966 (or 1967?) Christmas card featuring a menagerie of animals from a few years’ worth of John Schoenherr’s children’s books. He made the original drawing in ink on scratchboard, but later scratched out the pine bough and ornaments (I’m not sure why).

eagle.........The Golden Eagle by Robert Murphy
kangaroo.........Kangaroo Red by Bernice Freschet
opossum.........Mississippi Possum by Miska Miles
fox.........Fox and the Fire by Miska Miles
skunk.........The Dangerous Year by Era Zistel
auk.........A Vanishing Thunder by Adrien Stoutenburg
rabbit.........Rabbit Garden by Miska Miles
bear.........Gentle Ben by Walt Morey

The Day the Bears Go to Bed

For a long time I've had a bamboo suitcase filled with Dad-related ephemera: prints and proofs and F&Gs and extracted pages from magazines. I've finally started to archive the contents and put them in some kind of order.

This is one extract I just found, which I hadn't remembered well: it's an illustration for "The Day the Bears Go to Bed" by Jean George from the October 1966 issue of Reader's Digest.

Dad made the original (kept by the publisher) in ink on scratchboard when he was at the top of his game in that medium. And this was a "collaboration," so to speak, with Jean George that predated their pairing on the Newbery Award-winning novel, Julie of the Wolves(Dad's cover has since been replaced by another, but the pictures inside are his).

The Studio, April 12, 2010

A few days after Dad died, I took some photos his studio. On the big easel is a snowy owl perched atop an Inuit inukshuk or inunnguaq. It's one of his last "finished" paintings - at least in that he signed and varnished it. Next to that is an old, local barn, thinly painted on foamcore. And on the left (and below) is the last picture he started, sometime after Christmas and before he went to the hospital in January. It shows an old bear slowly moving over a rocky landscape.

A Blog About John Schoenherr

"Fields of Summer" (1990) by John Schoenherr


My father, John Schoenherr, was born 75 years ago today. Since his death in April, I've been sorting through his photographs, letters, sketches, drawings, paintings, illustrations, magazines, books, and other ephemera. As many of the things I've uncovered or rediscovered by and about him might be of broader interest, I've decided to display and discuss them here. I hope you'll take a look and keep coming back.