The Call of the Wild and White Fang [Paperback]

In two of Jack Londons best-loved masterpieces, themes of survival, instinct, and the primordial struggle between nature and civilization intertwine.

Call of the Wildtells the tale of adventure during the Yukon Gold Rush, and fully captures the unquenchable spirit of Buck, a kidnapped dog trying to survive in the harshest of environments. Also set in Alaska, the powerfulWhite Fangfollows the often savage life of the magnificent title character, a mix of wolf and dog.

The illustrations for this series were created by Scott McKowen, who, with his wife Christina Poddubiuk, operates Punch & Judy Inc., a company specializing in design and illustration for theater and performing arts. Their projects often involve research into the visual aspects of historical settings and characters. Christina is a theater set and costume designer and contributed advice on the period clothing for the illustrations.

Scott created these drawings in scratchboard ? an engraving medium which evokes the look of popular art from the period of these stories. Scratchboard is an illustration board with a specifically prepared surface of hard white chalk. A thin layer of black ink is rolled over the surface, and lines are drawn by hand with a sharp knife by scraping through the ink layer to expose the white surface underneath. The finished drawings are then scanned and the color is added digitally.

Jack London, also known as John Griffith Chaney, was born in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. By the time he was thirty years old, he had already acquired international fame for his novels The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf, and White Fang. Throughout the course of his career, London wrote more than fifty novels, short stories, plays, and political essays. He was among the first writers to work with the movie industry, and The Sea-Wolf was the basis for the first full-length American moviló&