"-aard" author who wrote about animals?

May 25, 2006 11:01 PM

I've forgotten the name of an author I used to read as a child. His last name ended in "aard", I think, and maybe started with a K or an L? He wrote a number of books about dogs...

The books were adventure/nature tales about dogs, foxes, wolves, etc. I think one of them had a color in the title ("Silver Fox", "Red Dog", something like that). I was born in 1977, and read the books in kindergarten. I think these books were already old at the time. Does anyone remember the author's name? Please help, this is driving me mad!

posted by vorfeed to Writing & Language (14 answers total)

Jack London is nothing like "aard", but I'll throw it out as the most obvious. White Fang could be the color choice.
posted by willnot at 11:26 PM on May 25, 2006

Oh, and maybe Richard Adams. He's probably better known for Watership Down, but he wrote a book called Plauge Dogs, and his name does contain an "ard".
posted by willnot at 11:30 PM on May 25, 2006

A name ending in 'aard' almost certainly is dutch or danish.
You can google pages of children's book authors and then search for 'aard'.
I found Ole Lund Kirkegaard. His name fits the bill and the period is right.
The books are not particularly about animals though.
posted by jouke at 12:03 AM on May 26, 2006

Perhaps you are looking for Jean Craighead George? She wrote many illustrated nature adventures for young people. Vulpes, The Red Fox and Look to the North: A Wolf Pup Diary are two of her books about wolves or foxes or doggy-things.
posted by foxinthesnow at 12:07 AM on May 26, 2006

Response by poster: It's not Jack London, Richard Adams, or J.C. George. The books were rather like London's White Fang in tone, though.
posted by vorfeed at 12:14 AM on May 26, 2006

Best answer: All you had to say was Big Red.
Wonderful, classic boy's books by Jim Kjelgaard. But I hope somone can tell me that I'm not crazy for remembering a book about a toddler on the prairie(?) wandering off to be raised by badgers (?).
posted by bartleby at 12:18 AM on May 26, 2006

Pardon me, I shouldn't say "boy's books". But I remember when we were reading these in our forts, the girls were reading "Stormy, Misty's Foal", etc. in their pink bedrooms. We both had cooties.
posted by bartleby at 12:22 AM on May 26, 2006

Response by poster: That's it! Thank you, bartleby!

p.s. I was a girl who LOVED these books! :D
posted by vorfeed at 12:28 AM on May 26, 2006

well, you were welcome in the fort then. wanna ginger ale?
oh, and Ha! Call me sexist, but not crazy.
posted by bartleby at 12:52 AM on May 26, 2006

> p.s. I was a girl who LOVED these books! :D

Kjelgaard probably would have been glad to hear that.

Obit:

His interest in Milwaukee was
stirred through a correspond-
ence with an appreciative read-
named Eddie Dresen. The
reader liked Mr. Kjelgaard's
magazine pieces.

Mr. Kjelgaard learned eventu-
ally that "Eddie" was a diminu-
tive of Edna and, in 1939, he met
Edna in person. They were mar-
ried here shortly afterward.

posted by pracowity at 3:22 AM on May 26, 2006

Bartleby:

Incident at Hawk's Hill, IIRC. Good juvenile fiction.
posted by The Confessor at 6:20 AM on May 26, 2006

Oh man, "Fire-hunter" was one of my favorites as a young sprout.
posted by ChromeDome at 8:33 AM on May 26, 2006

Another girl who really liked Kjelgaard's books. More good dog books were written by Albert Payson Terhune.
posted by deborah at 1:31 PM on May 26, 2006

My wife was a girl who adored Kjelgaard's books, as well. She talks about them now and then. And she was (and in many ways still is) quite the tomboy...
posted by lhauser at 9:26 PM on May 27, 2006