Taking a leap of faith Cabot Lyford’s charming ‘Arthur the Moose’ teaches about accepting one’s abilities

ARTHUR THE MOOSE, story and illustrations by Cabot Lyford, Castlebay Inc., Round Pond, Maine, 2004, 36 pages, hardcover. $14.95.

Cabot Lyford was born in Sayre, Pa., in 1925, served in World War II and attended Cornell University. After viewing the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre in Paris, he vowed to sculpt. To make ends meet he wrote scripts for television, first for NBC, then for a TV station in Durham, N.H. He eventually joined the faculty at Philips Exeter Academy, where he taught sculpture and art history for 23 years. Since retiring in 1985, he has devoted much of his time to his chosen medium, establishing himself as one of the country’s foremost sculptors. In 1990 he received the National Academy of Design’s Sculpture Prize.

Animals have always been favorite subjects for Lyford. The artist, who lives in New Harbor, has created a veritable Noah’s Ark since he took up hammer and chisel, grinder and sander, back in the 1940s (he studied with Charles Cutler at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1947). His menagerie in stone and wood includes sounding whales and leaping dolphins, winging geese and stoic rams.

Lyford’s affinity for creatures also manifests itself in a whimsical story he wrote and illustrated for his children in the mid-1950s. Thanks to Castlebay Music in Round Pond, the charming tale of Arthur the Moose is available to a much wider audience of young readers – and old, for this is a picture book custom-made for a parent and grandparent to share with the little ones.

The story is simple. Arthur, “a moose of medium size and shape,” notices the annual migration of birds south every autumn and the return every spring. Faced with another brutal winter – in Maine, we suppose – he gets the notion that he can follow suit, using his broad, winglike rack (which Lyford has painted a bright yellow). Of course, moose don’t fly; as the rhyming moral of the story puts it, “To fly is great, but not a moosish trait.” Arthur gains an important bit of wisdom from his plunge off a bluff into a northern lake: “Florida is strictly for the birds.”

The elementary text contains some sophisticated language. Words such as “pall,” “succulent,” “enthused” and “airfoil” are mixed in with such fun fabrications as “morosity” and “blossomness” (not to mention “moosish”). The watercolor illustrations are delightful, full of humor and energy. A favorite detail is the towel that hangs from the moose’s neck after his short and wet flight: it reads “Waldorf,” as in the hotel.

Lyford once said that an artist’s work should reflect “warmth, humor, and a love of life and nature.” Arthur the Moose is a perfect combination of all these elements.

Carl Little can be reached at little@acadia.net.