Alphabet Books - ABC du Père Castor

For an illustrator a pictorial alphabet book presents a number of challenges, not least of which is the shortage of words beginning with q, x and z. Today’s example follows a thematic approach based on wild animals - a popular approach that focuses on groupings such as Flora, Fauna, Aquatic Life, Astronomy, Travel etc.  Père Castor illustrated books for children first appeared in France in the 1930s, English language versions were published by George, Allen and Unwin after the war in a series of 8 as Père Castor’s Wild Animal Books. In each volume the lively illustrations are the work of Latvian born illustrator, Feodor Rojankovsky (1891-1970), known professionally as Rojan.  Born as a Russian citizen and educated in St. Petersburg, he was conscripted into the White Army in 1919 and ended up as a p-o-w in Poland, by 1922 he was officially stateless. He found his way to Paris in 1925 and established himself as a commercial illustrator with a speciality in expensively produced volumes of suavely visualised erotic encounters before finding a niche in the world of books for children.  The drawings he produced for the Père Castor series have a wonderful sense of spontaneity achieved by a rich tonal range of closely controlled mark making on lithographic plates. As the blurb on the back of one volume nicely puts it - the book is “gently ablaze with Rojan’s lithographs”.  After arriving in the US in 1941 he began an almost 30 year career as an illustrator for children’s books.

Rojan’s cover design is a minor compositional triumph I can’t recall seeing elsewhere. The group of animals on the front cover are drawn again on the back as if viewed from behind. Each creature has a page to itself with the only exceptions at the end of the alphabet (from w to z) to cope with the limitations imposed by the problematic number of 26 letters. The placing on the page and the lightness of touch are a delight throughout the book. Another alphabet book (Off By Train) can be seen by following this link. The last image is my collection of Père Castor Wild Animal books.