Jim Kjelgaard: "A Master Storyteller"

from The Living Wilderness Winter 1947 – 1948 Pages 22 - 23    

1336 N 31st, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was Jim and Edna Kjelgaard’s first home together after their marriage on July 15, 1939. Their only child, Karen, was born while they lived in Milwaukee. In an essay Karen wrote about her father she said, “Looking back, I’d consider it far from Dad’s natural habitat.” But her mother, who preferred Eddy to Edna, was a “city girl” and living in Milwaukee “was one of the compromises of their marriage.” Another compromise Jim made: no dogs were allowed in the house. Karen recalled they always had dogs, “even if they did have to stay outside.” She continued: “The first dog I remember is Mac, a golden cocker spaniel. A few years later, I got Sheila, an Irish Setter shipped to us by Rudd Weatherwax, Lassie’s trainer. We had Sheila some years, and I wish I could say she was Big Red personified, but she wasn’t.” It was in this home that Jim wrote his first young adult novels: Forest Patrol (1941), Rebel Siege (1943),

A Jim Kjelgaard Bibliography: The Books     Forest Patrol (Holiday House, 1941 / illustrated by Tony Palazzo) Rebel Siege (Holiday House, 1943 / illustrated by Charles Banks Wilson) Big Red (Holiday House, 1945 / illustrated by Bob Kuhn) Buckskin Brigade (Holiday House, 1947 / illustrated by Ralph Ray, Jr.) Snow Dog (Holiday House, 1948 / illustrated by Jacob Landau) Kalak of the Ice (Holiday House, 1949 / illustrated by Bob Kuhn) A Nose for Trouble (Holiday House, 1949) Wild Trek (Holiday House, 1950) Chip, the Dam Builder (Holiday House, 1950 / illustrated by Ralph Ray, Jr.) Irish Red (Holiday House, 1951) Fire-Hunter (Holiday House, 1951 / illustrated by Ralph Ray, Jr.) The Explorations of Père Marquette (Random House, 1951) Trailing Trouble (Holiday House, 1951) The Spell of the White Sturgeon (Dodd, Mead, 1953) Outlaw Red (Holiday House, 1953) The Coming of the Mormons (Random House, 1953) Cracker Barrel Trouble Shooter (Dodd, Mead, 1954) Haunt Fox (Holiday

  1238 Palo Verde Drive in Phoenix, Arizona, was Jim Kjelgaard’s home from about 1952 until his death on July 12, 1959. Kjelgaard had been suffering from back pain, which was a lifelong ailment, and what his daughter, Karen, called “incipient arthritis” and so for health reasons the family moved to Arizona from their home in Thiensville, Wisconsin. Thiensville was a small farming community north of Milwaukee and quite close to Lake Michigan.     Kjelgaard had a small office in their Phoenix home and wrote many of his best-known novels there, including, Lion Hound (1955), Desert Dog (1956), Wolf Brother (1957), Stormy (1959), and his two adult novels, The Lost Wagon (1955) and The Land is Bright (1958). Karen, in an essay, wrote: “As I grew up in Phoenix, I became more aware of how hard my father worked. It was not unusual for him to spend the entire day in his office, typing with two fingers on his old manual typewriter, then eat supper and go back to writing.” She said th

 

This autobiographical essay by Jim Kjelgaard appeared in The Junior Book of Authors – Second Edition, Revised – edited by Stanley J. Kunitz & Howard Haycraft (H. W. Wilson Co., 1951). Kjelgaard notes, in the final paragraphs of the article, that he had “written four books for boys,” which makes me think the article was written between the publications of Buckskin Brigade  (1947) and Snow Dog (1948).