Animals #AtoZChallenge

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is Relief Printed Alphabet Squared, an alphabet of alphabets illustrated with relief block prints.  As usual, I’m starting early, but you can find out more about the A to Z Challenge here and see what varied and interesting themes other bloggers will be exploring this year.

        Without further ado, we’ll start with An Alphabet of Animals, a little paperback book published in 1865 and billed as being by “A Lady,” with no attribution for the illustrator of the wood engravings.  Given common practices at the time, it’s entirely possible that the 

illustrations were reused from unrelated blocks the publisher already owned from past projects, so they could well be done by all different more-or-less anonymous artists.  A is for Ape in this alphabet, and it’s a pleasing enough depiction, if nothing too exciting.  I like how cheerful this ape looks.  My favorite letter from this alphabet is the frog of F, which has lots of attractive detail.  I’ve also included the entire verse for the frog because it’s a nice one.

        Today’s second alphabet is also animals.  This one is by illustrator Andrew Wightman.  His linoleum block A is Albatross, and it shows the clean, clear, bold style shared by all his animals in this series.  My favorite, though, is D’s Dung Beetle, which has a cartoonish charm.  Although most of Wightman’s animals are fairly realistically portrayed, the dung beetle is more anthropomorphized, and is really quite adorable.

        I’ll also share a few bonus alphabets for the letter A, which I’ve mentioned in the past.  Most important is Mary Azarian, who has published two lavishly illustrated wood block alphabets.  Here’s her A for Arbor from A Gardener’s Alphabet, in which she has water-colored her wood block prints.  You can also see the letters G, Q, U, and X from this book in previous posts.  They’re some of my favorites, but today I’ve added J to the list.

        And I love Azarian’s black and white A Farmer’s Alphabet even more.  (The book is black and white, but she's also made watercolored versions of some of its wood block prints.)  From that one I’ve already shared not only A (which is Apple), but B, D, G, H, M, X, and Z (Zinnia, probably my favorite).  Be sure to check them out.

        Then there’s the linocut alphabet by Walter Inglis Anderson (USA, 1903-1965).  I’ve written about him before, as well as sharing his letters A (also Apple), D, M, S (my favorite perhaps? Sea), and T.  Plus his B (Butterfly) appears in the title collection in the Theme Reveal post, and his Z will help us close out the A to Z Challenge.

        For a moral today I can’t do better than “A Lady” in her observations on the frog.  Children, let’s not be cruel to any living creatures.  Instead, we need to treat all around us gently.

        And also, the journey of 26 letters starts with a single A.

        So, if you were to select an alphabet of animals, what’s the one favorite animal you would be absolutely sure to include?

[Pictures: Ape, Frog, wood engravings from An Alphabet of Animals, 1865 (Images from McGill Library);

Albatross, Dung Beetle, linocuts by Andrew Wightman, c. 2015 (Images from AndrewWightmanPrints);

Arbor, Japanese Garden, wood block print by Mary Azarian from A Gardener’s Alphabet, 2000.]