Pussycat Blackie's Travels
Josiah Royce, Jr.
Edited by Robin Wallace and Randall Auxier
Foreword and Afterword by Professor Auxier
Illustrated by Brenna Young
1st Trade Edition anywhere!
$19.95
About the book:
This delightful book, appropriate for readers from middle school age to adults and seniors interested in California and Civil War history, was written by a young boy of eight or nine who was living in Grass Valley, California, in 1864. This young boy, Josiah Royce, Jr., was a child prodigy and a genius who grew up to be a distinguished U.S. philosopher whose mature works are now being republished and studied all over the world.
Josiah Royce was a native of Grass Valley, California, who “loved cats, California, and controversy, which lead him to being a philosophy professor at Harvard, and to many of the best universities in the world”—according to co-editor of this book, Professor Randall Auxier of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Prof. Auxier is General Editor of The Works of Josiah Royce, 1855-1916, and author of Time, Will and Purpose: Living Ideas from the Philosophy of Josiah Royce. In Pussycat Blackie’s Travels, he contributes a Foreword on cats and an Afterword called “The Mystery of History” which explains in terms that a middle-schooler or junior high student can understand the way historical scholarship is done.
The story is lavishly illustrated in color by Brenna Young, a teenager and also a Grass Valley native, who received the first award for her art at the age of five. She worked closely with Editor Robin Wallace and layout artist Katy Hight to bring Royce’s story to life in paintings. Brenna used her own black and white kitty, Sylvia, as a model for her drawings of Royce’s adventurous cat, and she also studied authentic engravings and illustrations from the 19th century Gold Rush period in the Sierra Foothills.
