Woodland Tales

Seton arranged this children’s nature book by the calendar: things to see in springtime, summertime, autumntime and wintertime, followed by sections headed Things to Know, Things to Do and Things to Remember. Invented folk tales sit beside plain instruction. One page tells how the hepatica or the bluebird came to be, the next covers blazes, sign language, smoke prints of leaves, bird boxes and reading animal tracks. Winter chapters map the North Star, Orion and the Pleiades. The preface, addressed to the parent Seton calls the Guide, offers the tales to children of all ages who have not outgrown the delight of a fairy tale, and says the rest spells Woodcraft. A hundred of his own drawings run through the text.