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| Everybody's 25 April 1953 p.23 |
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| Everybody's 25 April 1953 p.34 |
This rather tame illustration of two boys who help "Old Elmer", a beaver by supplying wood for him to build his dam is not the best Sheppard illustration. The problem is they are late for school every morning and the school report is due any time by post. How to make sure Dad doesn't see it? Why, hold up the mail coach of course. They manage to fumble their way to finding the specific letter but by then, yes you've guessed it, their dog has grabbed it and heads home.
"Report Stage" was written by James McCormick and appeared in Everybody's 25 April 1953 and he also wrote another tale, I have, which was illustrated by Sheppard, called "Lion's Share" which appeared in the same year in 26 September issue
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| Everybody's 26 September 1953 p.28 |
The caption reads "He spotted us alright – and he'd spotted the rifles too" and the illustration shows Sheppard's talent off to the full with a herd (is that the right word?) of stallions and their young running towards us. I count seventeen animals plus five on the rise! The story is about a 12 year old who visits his Grandpa who should "live on 4 legs" according to the boy's 'Grandmaw' and a specific horse, "Baldy" who "had a broad white blaze down his face and the rest of him was a lovely golden brown". Baldy was known to be able to spot a gun and head off up to tall timber to escape and that's what he does despite the presence of a cougar which the man and boy spot.
Both stories make me think McCormick was American but one line in this story makes me suspicious: "You could have lost a couple of English Counties in them easily". Was he like many writers at the time based in Britain and using Wild West genre to inspire them to write? I have no other magazines with his work illustrated by Sheppard so there may more out there, but he's a complete mystery to me.
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| Everybody's 28 November 1953 p.30 |
Moving on the next image I want to share is from a short story written by the prolific author Alan Jenkins. "Ad Infinitum" appeared in Everybody's 28 November 1953 and Sheppard's drawing shows a woman on platform speaking to crowd while being filmed with the caption “And now Dr. Grimble showed us the most terrible thing of all”. It's a nice little science-fiction story about a reporter visiting Doctor Felicity Grimble at the brand new Ribbleswick Atomarium where a "ultra-microscope, an observatory for studying the motion of atoms and electrons" was being shown off for the first time. In fact Dr. Grimble shows them life on an electron by slowing the film down and comments that we are like that electron. Other larger beings outside our know universe are observing us as we have just observed the life on an electron - with all that that entails for religions and ethics! An interesting tale.
