Brighty of the Grand Canyon - Tapa blanda

Brighty was a real live burro who lived in the Grand Canyon. He is believed to have been brought from Flagstaf Arizona down to the Colorado River in the bottom of the Grand Canyon in 1890-1892. Whomever brought him there is believed to have drowned in the Colorado River. That persons body was never found. After that, Brighty spent the next thirty years as essentially an independent contractor. He would carry loads and passengers up and down the Bright Angel Trail in return for food. Nobody ever owned him. If the payment he received in food was not satisfactory, he would just leave and go to work for somebody else. Brighty was given his name by a prospector who found him after his original owners had died. Brighty became famous when US President Theodore Roosevelt used him to hunt mountain lions. An old prospector living in the canyon found the burro running wild along Bright Angle Creek and named him Brighty and held him not with ropes but with friendship. When the prospector mysteriously died, Brighty once again roamed free. On his trips up and down the canyon wall he hobnobbed with map-makers, artists and geologists and soon they were following his trail from rim to river.

The author of this book, Marguerite Henry, was born Marguerite Breithaupt on April 13, 1902 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She wrote more than 50 books. Almost all of her books were about animals, especially about horses. Misty of Chincoteague is her most famous story, as it has been made into a movie and possibly will be made into a TV series. Her second most famous story is Brighty of the Grand Canyon about a real-live burro who for thirty years carried passengers up and down the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon in Arizona to the Colorado River. Marguerite Henry was married to Sidney Crocker Henry. They had no children. She died in on November 26, 1997 in Rancho Santa Fe in California at the age of 95. Her books were mostly illustrated by Wesley Dennis. She wanted the best horse artist in the world to illustrate it, so she went to the library, studied the horse books and selected and sent her manuscript to Wesley Dennis. John Wesley Dennis was born May 16, 1903 in Falmouth, Massachusetts. He decided to make his living drawing horses. Dennis began by sketching racetrack winners, hoping to receive portrait commissions from the owners. He decided to further his education and traveled to France to study with an artist who an expert on horse anatomy. He illustrated more than 150 books. Most of his books were books about horses. John Wesley Dennis had a special arrangement with Marguerite Henry where she paid him a part of her royalty checks. He really worked for her, not for the publisher. He died on September 3, 1966 at age 63 in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the same place where he had been born.