Owney featured at the Children's Illustrated Art Museum
We are excited to announce that The Secret Around-the-World Adventures of Owney the Postal Dog is being showcased as part of a new exhibit at the Children's Illustrated Art Museum in St. Louis! The museum is dedicated to the art of illustration in children’s literature and we are delighted to be included in their upcoming show, “All Aboard: Now and Then.” This new exhibit focuses on trains and their importance in history as depicted in children’s literature. Naturally, Owney is being featured in the exhibit since he became a celebrity for riding trains all across the United States! The Children's Illustrated Art Museum invited us to display artwork from the book illustrating Owney’s close connection to America’s burgeoning network of railroads in the late 19th century.
In The Secret Around-the-World Adventures of Owney the Postal Dog we tried to give the fictional aspects of the story the same backdrop of historical accuracy as the factual story. So while there is no record of Owney riding on foreign railroads during his trip around the world, we figured that because he was so used to riding trains across America on his own, it would probably be second nature for him to do the same thing on the other side of the world!
Railroads were making North America smaller, but the rest of the world was also shrinking, one track at a time. By 1895, when Owney embarked on his around-the-world trip, the Indian Railway Association had finished a new branch connecting the eastern and western extremes of India, the Anatolian Railway was expanding into the Turkish countryside, bringing the Middle East closer to Europe, and the Orient Express was the preferred route between Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) and Paris. All of these developments allowed for Owney to take his alternative, fictionalized route across the globe in our story.
For the exhibit we’re displaying some pages that evoke Owney’s love affair with trains and just how instrumental a role they played in his story. If you happen to be in the St. Louis area, we hope you’ll stop by the museum to see this display of art from Owney and many other wonderful children’s books featuring illustrations of locomotives. Many thanks to the folks at the Children's Illustrated Art Museum for including The Secret Around-the-World Adventures of Owney the Postal Dog in their latest exhibit!
Please visit the museum’s website at http://www.stlciam.org for more details.
