Today I discovered a rather surprising book, Buebchens Traum  [Little Boy’s Dream], with a lovely snowy owl on the cover, by a Dagmar von Natzmer published around 1909 in Potsdam, by a firm in Potsdam, Germany.  No entry for her or the book in the usual sources, so she may not have written or illustrated another picture book.  Or maybe “von Natzmer” was her maiden name and she published under her married one later in her career.

The story is quite simple. A little boy falls asleep in the woods and has a marvelous dream about owls.  Not ominous birds of prey, like Mr. Brown in Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin or a whimsically befuddled creature like A. A. Milne’s Owl, who doesn’t quite manage to live up to his species’ reputation for wisdom.  Von Natzmer’s well-dressed owls look as if they belong in a parlor instead of the deep forest.

A mighty hunter looks with pride at his game sack filled with mice.

This handsome couple prepares to celebrate their nuptials in the woodland.

The band plays for waltzing birds in evening dress

and little girl owls twirling around in frilly pink dresses.

The boy wakes up at dawn and his dream of the elegantly anthropomorphized raptors vanishes.

How should we react to pictures of owls that diverge so far from the actual creatures?  A picture book this eccentric has its own peculiar charm, but it is also a bittersweet reminder of the differences between the projections of the imagination and undomesticated nature.

We can recognize Flaco in the hunter in green, having taught himself how to catch vermin after twelve years in captivity.  Of course the ones he ate were probably full of rodenticide.   The people who worried about how long he could survive in the wilds of New York City also were concerned that the Eurasian eagle owl would never find a mate.   He did hoot a lot from the heights of tall buildings–was he calling for a female?  Characterized as a very curious bird, we wanted to believe that his ability to explore and survive this strange new environment compensated for the lack of the companionship of his kind, at least for a while.  If he had settled down, surely he would not have chosen a female pretty in pink…

Von Natzmer’s owls reconfirm Beatrix Potter’s opinion that dressing birds posed a stiff challenge to the artist.  Jemima Puddleduck in her bonnet and shawl is a small masterpiece because of the way the fabric is draped around the contours of her meticulously realistic body.   But an owl in a military uniform?  Its legs are so long that the observant reader notices that the figure looks like an owl’s head stuck a little clumsily on top of a man’s body.   Those of us who never saw Flaco during the last twelve months will leave a deeper impression of “owlness” from the many photographs of him that captured the black eyes intent, yet expressionless stare, the beak’s cruel curve, the illusion of weight the splendid feathers lent to a four and a half pound body with a six-foot wingspan than the color illustrations of these fantastical owls.  Still, von Natzmer’s wonderful endpaper design of an owl in flight would make a beautiful card to leave under Flaco’s favorite tree in Central Park.