Jim Kjelgaard: "A Master Storyteller": Welcome Message

     This blog is dedicated to the work of Jim Kjelgaard (pronounced kel-guard). A writer best known for his young adult novels about wild places and often featuring dogs and animals in their own environment. His most famous being Big Red (1945) and its two sequels Irish Red (1951) and Outlaw Red (1953). Kjelgaard wrote dozens of other excellent young adult novels, including Haunt Fox (1954), Trading Jeff and His Dog (1956), and my favorite, The Spell of the White Sturgeon (1953). His writing won a Boys Club Award, a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Boys’ Life Award.
     Kjelgaard also wrote a few novels for the adult market—The Lost Wagon (1955) being one—and dozens (perhaps hundreds) of short stories for the best pulp and slick magazines of the 1930s and '40s. Magazines like Argosy, Adventure, Black Mask, Blue Book, Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, Short Stories, and many (many) others. All of it worthy of a modern audience and most with the wilderness settings his readers have come to expect.
     Jim Kjelgaard: "A Master Storyteller"—a moniker coined for Kjelgaard by Kirkus in its review of Swamp Cat (1957)—is a place for new and experienced readers alike. Come and stay awhile, share your thoughts, and help us bring the magic of Jim Kjelgaard’s writing to a new generation of readers.

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Jim Kjelgaard's Milwaukee Home

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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), ...
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Jim Kjelgaard's Arizona Home

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  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.”...
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