Charlie Russell and the Gnomes

In a land that is "about as wild a place as you can find these days," magical things are about to happen.

Deep in the woods of Glacier National Park, artist Charlie Russell struggles to create his latest painting. With fellow artist Joe De Yong, he hikes into the wilderness to clear the cobwebs from his mind.

Just as the artists disappear from sight, three gnomes—funny little creatures that Charlie built from twisted branches and birch bark—POP! POP! POP! to life. They know how to inspire Charlie’s next masterpiece! Jumping down from the porch, they search the forest floor for just the right thing to jog his imagination.

Creating an afternoon of magical mischief, author Emily Wilson crafts a modern fairy tale based on the life of Charles M. Russell (1864–1926) and his many letters.

Illustrator Jeanne Bowman fills each page with the beautiful colors and wildlife of Glacier National Park, a landscape that still conjures awe in visitors today.

Charlie Russell and the Gnomes "whisks readers away to a clean-aired place where a crunch and crackle among the pine needles might be the western wind ... or perhaps mischievous gnomes. Whimsical illustrations complement the lyrical prose of a story spun with magic but based in fact."— Karen McWhorter , Scarlett Curator of the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Audiobooks courtesy of the South Dakota Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Download the activity below by opening the image in a new tab and saving.

Emily Crawford Wilson has a great love of the outdoors and the magical possibilities that come from playing within old-growth forests. She is the former Senior Curator of Art at the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana, where she developed numerous exhibitions of Russell’s artwork and wrote many articles about the landscape and people who influenced him. During her work, she became enamored with Russell’s gnomes and the short stories he wrote about them in his numerous illustrated letters to friends. She currently resides in San Antonio, Texas, with her daughter.

Jeanne Bowman grew up dreaming about forests, faeries, and magic all throughout her life as she moved up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains from Colorado, to Montana, to New Mexico, and back. She studied art at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana, and currently resides in Sidney, Montana. She recently illustrated Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant .