A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm
by Edwin Way Teale
with a new introduction by Ann Haymond Zwinger
A book about a time gone by, about family, about growing up — storytelling
and descriptive nature writing at its best. The
great naturalist, Edwin Way Teale, spent his boyhood holidays and summers at his
grandparents' farm, Lone Oak, in
Indiana.
In Dune Boy, first published in 1943, he recounts these buccolic visits and his
budding interest in the natural
world around him. A loner, often bullied by other children,
Teale escaped to the roof of the old house where he gazed at the
golden dunes in the distance, and dreamed his own fantastic dreams.
The young Teale was fascinated by moths, dragonflies, snakes, and the workings of
the farm. He yearned to fly. He tried to
hitch a calf to a cart, to ride a pig. He created a "museum" for his collections of
arrowheads, stones, and fish skeletons. Most
of all, he enjoyed his storytelling, hardworking grandfather, and his book-reading,
equally hardworking grandmother. They
reveled in and encouraged him. He returned to Lone Oak every summer until he was fifteen,
when the old farm house caught fire and burned down.
This publication was originally published in 1974 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. and was
reissued in 1998, with a new forward by Ann Haymond Zwinger, by Bibliopola Press, UConn Co-op,
Storrs, CT. To purchase the publication please contact the
UConn Co-op.
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