Andy and the Lion
Andy and the Lion
Written and Illustrated by James Daugherty
New York, Viking Press, 1946
Originally published 1938
8" x 11"
Kerlan Collection, Children's Literature Research Collections
University of Minnesota Libraries
James Daugherty began his art career as a Synchronist abstractionist—a painter under the spell of Cézanne, Matisse, and Delaunay. By the md-1920s, however, he had reinvented himself as a muralist and illustrator specializing in American subjects.
In this, his first children's picture book, Daugherty reset the legend of "Androcles and the Lion" in a Norman Rockwell-esque American small town. A local library figures prominently in the narrative, and Daugherty, who was a favorite speaker at The New York Public Library's Central Children's Room, dedicated the book to "Lady Astor and Lord Lenox, the Library Lions," who flank the Fifth Avenue entrance to this building.