About the Book
In a beautifully illustrated and inventive book entitled The Boy Who Loved All Living Things: The Imaginary Childhood Journal of Albert Schweitzer, award-winning author and illustrator Sheila Hamanaka depicts little known events from the childhood of a familiar Noble prizewinner. The book is a twist on a traditional family album, filled with “photos” of the animals Schweitzer held most dear: piglets, kittens, church mice, birds, worms, fish and more. The entries are all hand-lettered and embellished with 19th century marbleized endpapers and wildlife prints.
But The Boy Who Loved All Living Things has much to its credit besides artistic merit. Albert Schweitzer was a renowned doctor who founded and devoted his life to a hospital in Gabon, Africa. As an adult, he often wrote about his early tests in life that played a large role in shaping his character. It is these events, based largely on his book Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1949), that Hamanaka has taken great care to retell in young Albert’s voice.
One day, for example, Schweitzer and his friend Heinrich were going to use slingshots to kill birds in a nearby tree. Albert was afraid Heinrich would laugh at him if he refused to participate, but at the last moment, he took decisive action and saved his bird friends. Years later, Schweitzer recalled that this was a seminal event in his life, one in which the ability to withstand social pressure set him on the path of critical thinking and action.
True stories of a child’s mistakes, fears, kindness and courage fill the pages of this new publication from the Animal Welfare Institute. The book will speak to all young children, but especially to boys, who are often expected to sublimate their natural love for animals and prove their nascent manhood through acts of cruelty. “I do not think kids can identify with perfect people. All kids do bad things, and they need to know they can move forward, forgive themselves and others, and that we can all become great, each in our own way,” Hamanaka explained.
We greatly appreciate the Roy A. Hunt Foundation and the Kenneth A. Scott Charitable Trust, a Key Bank Trust, for their generous support in making this project possible.
About Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer was a doctor, author, musician, minister and philosopher who had a profound love for the natural world. He was deeply concerned about the cruelty humans inflict upon animals and called
this ethic – which included all plants, insects and animals – a “reverence for life.” He was honored as a scientist and humanitarian and was awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace prize for founding and devoting his life to a hospital in Gabon, Africa, saving thousands of lives in the process.
To learn more about the events retold in The Boy Who Loved All Living Things, as well as other aspects of Dr. Schweitzer’s life as an adult, we recommend reading the 1982 book Animals, Nature and Albert Schweitzer, with editing and commentary from Ann Cottrell Free. The full text is available on our website.
A Note from the Author
Everything in
The Boy Who Loved All Living Things is based on real events. I chose to include some incidents that may surprise Schweitzer’s admirers – for example, that he once beat his dog and had serious conflicts with his parents. Children lead complicated lives. Like many kids today, Albert felt peer pressure, and his stubbornness over clothes got him into trouble. Like many kids, he was dealt with severely at times, and like many kids, he sometimes meted out the same treatment in kind to his animal friends. This is real stuff. It happens and I think many kids will relate to it. It is a good topic for classroom discussion or for a talk with Mom and Dad about conflict resolution.
What is different about Albert, and what I hope kids take away, is how he chose to deal with his challenges. He admits that he made some cruel choices – but he expresses remorse and shame, which is important. He also made positive decisions. He convinced his friends not to fish. He saved his bird friends from death by slingshot. In the latter case, he learned to stand up to peer pressure and defend his burgeoning “reverence for life.” Schweitzer’s stubbornness, which made him endure beatings over what clothes to wear to school, became the backbone of his character, and enabled him to dedicate his life to a clinic in Africa. And this is something I hope parents take away – that sometimes the most irritating kids become the greatest adults.
The faux-photos in the book are black and white oil paintings that I tinted in the style of early photos. I chose to put fancy frames around the portraits of Albert’s animal friends to reflect the esteem in which he held them. Mr. and Mrs. Robin have frames that match those of Mr. and Mrs. Schweitzer. We forget how large animals loom in the lives of children. They are often close friends and confidantes. Witnessing the injustices that animals endure can be confusing and heart wrenching. Despite the cruelties of the world, Albert was able to retain a tender feeling for animals and they left an indelible impression on him. I hope that this book will bring a Noble prizewinner to life as a real – not perfect – person, and remind us all to be kinder.
References
Bentley, James. Albert Schweitzer: The Enigma New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
Free, Ann Cottrell. Animals, Nature and Albert Schweitzer. The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, The Albert Schweitzer Center, The Animal Welfare Institute, The Humane Society of the United States, 1982.
Schweitzer, Albert, Memoirs of Childhood
and Youth. (Aus meiner Kindheit und
Jugendzeit. Munich, C. H.
Beck, 1924.) Translated by C.
T. Campion. London, Allen & Unwin, 1924. New
York, Macmillan 1949.
Reviews
“Albert Schweitzer remains a role model for us all and I am thrilled that the Animal Welfare Institute has published this fine and much-needed book for children. To be sure, however, people of all ages will benefit from carefully reading it, not once, but many times.”
Mark Bekoff,
author and professor of biology,
University of Boulder;
co-founder of Ethnologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
“I just finished reading “The Boy Who Loved All Living Things” and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Our preschool children will absolutely love it and I believe the elementary children will learn from the events in the journal. The pictures draw oneself right into the story and its time. Also, it is written so well I felt like young Albert was sitting beside me, reading aloud while he was penning the events of yesterday in his journal. I look forward to reading this to our children here at the library.”
Julie Ann Howard Willis
Children's Librarian
Fairview Public Library
Fairview, WV
About the Publisher
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) is a non-profit charitable organization that was founded in 1951 by Mrs. Christine Stevens to reduce the sum total of pain and fear inflicted on animals by humans. In our early years, emphasis was placed on the desperate needs of animals used for experimentation. In the decades that followed, we expanded the scope of our work to address many other areas of animal suffering – including animals in agriculture, the ocean and the wild. Our Government and Legal Affairs Division, pushes for the passage of laws that reflect these goals.
In 1951, the Institute struck a medal in honor of Dr. Albert Schweitzer to be presented for outstanding achievement advancing animal welfare. In granting permission to use his name, Dr. Schweitzer wrote, “I would never have believed that my philosophy, which incorporates in our ethics a compassionate attitude toward all beings, would be noticed and recognized in my lifetime.” Albert and his dog Tchu Tchu appear in the medal, along with Albert’s words: “We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also.” Senator Hubert Humphrey, environmentalist Rachel Carson and primatologist Jane Goodall are among the many worthy recipients. Additional details about the award are available at
www.awionline.org/schweitzer/.
For more information about AWI’s programs and publications, visit the AWI website.
