Jeanne Bowman – illustratör

All his life, Bob Marshall craved adventure and being in nature. He knew and liked how different the city was from the wilderness. He also understood the importance of both. Bob was born in New York City in 1901 into a German-Jewish family. Outside his window, taxis honked and buses belched smoky air. But when summer came, Bob and his family left the city for the Adirondack Mountains. There, his parents taught him to identify plants, to love and cherish nature, and to fight for civil rights.Bob learned these lessons well. He decided that he would protect the wild places from the cars, trucks, and trains that threatened them. His college studies of forestry and environmental science and Ph.D. in plant physiology led Bob to jobs with the U.S. Forest Service and as Chief of Forestry with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1935, Bob joined with like-minded folks to form The Wilderness Society, eventually resulting in the Wilderness Act of 1964.Entirely through his own efforts, Bob Marshall saved five million acres of American wilderness. Alongside others, he contributed to the protection of over 110 million acres of wilderness. Though he died young, at the age of 38, Bob's dedication to preserving the wild places left a lasting legacy. Thanks to Bob Marshall, there are still places in America where people can listen to the wind in the trees, scramble up a mountain, and perhaps spot a grizzly cub (or two).

Georgia Hoyt Jipp (1926–1987) spent her childhood in and around small airplanes in western South Dakota. She loved flying. Despite her petite size, she earned her pilot's license at age nineteen.In 1948, at age twenty-two, she married Richard Jipp. Their wedding took place in an airplane circling above Philip, South Dakota, while wedding guests listened in on the radio.A blizzard struck on January 2, 1949, ushering in three months of snowstorms that ranked as the worst in the state's history. Georgia answered the desperate pleas of ranchers, parents of sick children, and the American Red Cross, flying over 150 rescue missions during those three long months of snowstorms—more than anyone else in the state! She was a blizzard pilot hero.

Badger Clark (1883–1957), South Dakota’s first poet laureate, is best known for his “A Cowboy’s Prayer,” erroneously attributed to Anonymous and a mainstay at rodeos across the United States. After spending much of his childhood in Deadwood, SD, Badger escaped a harrowing experience in Cuba and then found his vocation as a cowboy and a poet in Arizona. He had a way of expressing that smooth, rolling, clip-clop rhythm of horse and rider. Flood describes Badger’s poetry as “Shakespeare meets Walt Whitman during a cattle drive.” Badger Clark’s legacy as a bard of the American West endures. For over one hundred years, Badger Clark’s poems have been sung and celebrated at poetry gatherings, rodeos, and many a cowboy’s final farewell. His plain and simple verses spoke of his love for the land and a deep appreciation for a life lived close to nature. Badger Clark: Poetry Wrangler tells the story of this iconic Western writer and celebrates his enduring poetry.