Donated by Ann Nolan Clark.
Noncirculating; available for research.
The collection is protected by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U. S. Code). Reproductions can be made only if they are to be used for "private study, scholarship, or research." It is the user's responsibility to verify copyright ownership and to obtain all necessary permissions prior to the reproduction, publication, or other use of any portion of these materials, other than that noted above.
Born in 1898 to Patrick Frances and Mary (Dunne) Nolan, Ann Nolan Clark spent her life as a writer and as an educator for the Indians of the Southwest and the Hispanics of Latin American. She attended New Mexico Highland University, and at twenty-one, she married Thomas Patrick Clark. Their only son--Thomas Patrick, Jr.--died in World War II.
In college, Clark planned a two-fold career: teaching English and/or history to high school age children and writing historical accounts of the nineteenth-century Far Southwest. However, her first experience as an educator led her in a somewhat different direction than she had planned. After teaching English at Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico, Clark took a position in the early 1920s with the United States government's school for Indian children. She served for several years before the Tesugue Pueblo Indians asked Clark's supervisor if he would send her to teach their children. Although her colleagues warned her that the move would end her career as an Indian educator, Clark enthusiastically accepted the challenge. She later insisted that her experiences in the reservation's one-room schoolhouse were the "richest, most satisfying" in her career because she could work with children from pre-school age through fourth grade--a group she wished to observe and study.
Her experiences also brought a certain amount of frustration. Clark found the Tesugue School woefully underfunded; the school could afford little more than mops, brooms, some yellow soap, and her own meager salary. The children desparately needed instructional material geared for their own language and their Indian culture. Concluding that the Tesugue School had no money to buy books, Clark determined to write her own. The United States Office of Indian Affairs published fifteen of her books between 1940 and 1951, including Little Herder in Spring (1940),The Pine Ridge Porcupine (1941), Young Hunter of Picuris (1943), Singing Sioux Cowboy Reader (1947), and Little Navajo Herder (1951). Many of these books were bilingual, with the English and Indian translation printed in parallel columns. Moreover, Indians typically made up the work-force that produced these books; they translated, illustrated, printed and bound these books. Clark not only wrote her books for and about Indians but in time she also won a larger non-Indian audience.
In the 1940s, Clark went on to supervise the production of materials in Central and South America for the Institute of Inter-American Affairs. In 1945 the Institute sent her to travel and live for five years in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, training native teachers to work with their own people. Out of this period of her life came Magic Money (1950), Looking-for-Something (1952), and the 1953 Newbery Medal winner, Secret of the Andes. Clark based all her work on personal experiences, writing only about what and who she knew.
Her many awards included the 1953 Newbery Medal for Secret of the Andes the Catholic Library Assocation's Regina Medal in 1963, and the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs' Distinguished Service Award in 1962 for service given between 1960 and 1962. When asked about the development of her gift for story-telling, Clark claimed her inspiration came from her grandfather's Irish fairies.
Ann Nolan Clark passed away in December of 1995.
Sources:
This collection contains manuscripts for four of Clark's books: Arizona for Young People, Bear Cub, Brother Andre of Montreal, and Hoofprint on the Wind. These were published between 1965 and 1972. For each of these titles, the collection has manuscript and typescript drafts, often bearing the author's and copy editor's marks.
Arizona for Young People (1968) is essentially a textbook for fourth and fifth graders which Clark co-authored with Glenna Craw, a grade-school teacher. The first draft and final copy held in the collection treats the history of Arizona from the earliest known period to 1968 and spends a great deal of time dealing with Clark's favorite subject: Arizona's Indians. The drafts bear two different working titles, "A Child's Story of Arizona" and "Arizona Today."
Written in verse form, Bear Cub (1965) relates the story of a newborn grizzly cub and his mother. The tale follows the cub as he matures into a young grizzly who must leave his mother and his home. Only the typesetter's notes appear on this draft.
In Hoofprint on the Wind (1972), a young Irish boy who believes he saw a horse among the sea cliffs endures the ridicule of his friends and elders who insist he imagined it all. The collection includes a first edition of Hoofprint on the Wind (illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker) located in the archive's closed stacks. The collection also contains the edited typescript for chapters one through fourteen. This typescript copy bears corrections made by Clark in green pencil and blue ink, the copy editor's marks in brown and blue pencil, and the typesetter's notes in red pencil. This draft apparently was twice edited, thus the two different color markings for each editor.
Entitled "Man of Healing" in draft, Brother Andre of Montreal (1967) tells the story of Alfred Bessette, a brother of the Congregation of Holy Cross, whose devotion to St. Joseph led him to build a small oratory dedicated to Canada's patron saint. The oratory afterward became a Basilica at Montreal. This collection contains a first draft of Brother Andre in which Clark mixed both typescript and manuscript pages. The second draft is a typescript of chapters one through nineteen; only chapter nineteen reveals editing marks where Clark indicated she rewrote and enlarged the chapter.
The Jean Charlot Papers (DG0175) contains color illustrations and lithographs for Clark's Secret of the Andes.
Box Inventory
Box/Folder
A. Books
ARIZONA FOR YOUNG PEOPLE by Ann Nolan Clark and Glenna Craw (Nebraska: University Publishing Company, 1968).
1/1-2 Manuscript, edited first draft. "A Child's Story of Arizona,"
1/1 Parts 1-5, 96 pages;
1/2 Parts 6-8 plus bibliography, 78 pages.
1/3-6 Manuscript, final copy, edited for typist, "Arizona
Today,"
1/3 Parts 1-2, 67 pages, typescript taped to
legal paper;
1/4 Parts 3-4, 61 pages;
1/5 Parts 5-6, 73 pages;
1/6 Parts 7-8 plus bibliography and index, 75 pages.
1/7 Manuscript, miscellaneous draft of Part 1.
BEAR CUB by Ann Nolan Clark, illustrated by Charles Frace (New York: Viking Press, 1965).
2/1 Typescript, corrected copy, 1 March 1965, 52 pages.
HOOFPRINT ON THE WIND by Ann Nolan Clark, illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker (New York: Viking Press, 1972).
2/2-3 Typescript, edited for typesetter, signed by author.
Editor's notes in brown and blue pencil, author's in
green pencil and blue ink, typesetter's in red pencil,
2/2 Chapters 1-8, 81 pages;
2/3 Chapters 9-14, 53 pages.
BROTHER ANDRE OF MONTREAL by Ann Nolan Clark, illustrated by Harold Lang (New York: Vision Books, 1967).
2/4-5 Typescript, first copy, entitled "Man of Healing,"
2/4 Chapters 1-12, 58 pages;
2/5 Chapters 13-22, 86 pages.
2/6 Typescript, second copy, edited, chapters 1-19, 93 pages.
Processed: June 03, 1994.
Revised: May 30, 2001.
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