It was done as a series of 38 paintings of wildlife varying from lions to garter snakes. They all showed the adult with its offspring and were commissioned by Scholastic Book Services to be used as finger puppets. Künstler still has most of the originals. His children had selected some to hang in their rooms. Now they are hanging in their children’s rooms!
The North American tree porcupine has about 30,000 quills on its 2-foot-long body. It cannot shoot its quills. It backs up and slaps an attacker with its tail, driving a dozen or more quills into the enemy’s skin. Porcupines live above the 40th parallel in Canada and the US, except in the Rockies, where they range south to the Mexican border. They usually have one baby at a time that lives about 6 years in the wild.
