The wildlife cards we grew up with — made again for our kids

If you were a kid in the seventies or eighties, you might remember a pack of wildlife cards arriving in the mail with your name on it. One animal per card, a picture on the front, the facts on the back, and a box to file them in.

We remember the feeling as much as the facts. Something arrived for you, regularly. It was yours to sort however you liked. You had favorites, and you showed your favorites to anyone who would stand still.

Those sets have been out of print for decades. You can still find them secondhand, yellowed and incomplete. When we went looking for the modern version for our kids, we couldn’t find anything that captured the same feeling or facts.

We decided to create them ourselves. Ten cards a month, one animal per card, real biology on the back, built to be kept.

This is the first of Field Notes: how the cards get made, why, and who is making them.