About

The Jungle Books

About the Artist

Ladd Wendelin is an educator, former mayor, self-taught artist, and a native of Oberlin, Kansas.

Born May 21, 1981, Ladd grew up in rural Herndon, Kansas, where he spent many leisurely days playing with his two younger sisters, Greta and Rory, and exploring his grandparents' farms along the Beaver and Sappa Creeks. An avid sportsman and naturalist, his father, Norman, exposed Ladd to the wonders of the natural world through volumes of animal books and encyclopedias, a VHS set of David Attenborough's Trials of Life, and Marty Stauffer's Wild America on PBS.

At a young age, Ladd’s imagination was also fueled by Saturday morning cartoons, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and hours spent reading books at the library. As he grew up, Ladd found inspiration in music and the performing arts, including vocal performance and theater.

In 2004, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Interpersonal Communication at Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska. Following graduation, Ladd moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he appeared in dozens of plays and musicals while writing as a theater critic for the Lincoln Journal Star. He earned his teaching certification in English in 2012 and, in addition to other pursuits, has taught middle and high school level courses in a variety of subjects in Nebraska, Kansas, and California.

In 2013, Ladd moved back to his hometown of Oberlin, where he began writing for the Oberlin Herald as a reporter. He also served as the Mayor of Oberlin from 2014 to 2019.

In May of 2024, Ladd was approached by the Friends of the Library about a potential mural project along the walls in the stairs leading into the Youth Room. A series of rough sketches (seen at the base of the stairs) were produced in May and approved by the Library Board in July of that year, and the project was greenlit.

The Jungle Books is Ladd’s most ambitious work to date, encompassing more than 300 square feet of wall and ceiling space and featuring over 265 individually hand-drawn animals. The mural depicts 54 animal groups — including 18 mammals, 8 birds, 4 reptiles, 2 amphibians, 10 fish, and 12 invertebrates — representing ecosystems from across the globe, from the tropical rainforests of Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia to coastal waters, deep oceans, the American West, and the Australian outback.

The sheer size of the wall and painting techniques necessary to communicate character, color, and the jungle itself was a challenge, but not an impossible dream. While also teaching full-time, Ladd spent anywhere from a few days to weeks on each animal, settling for a blend of realism with expressive features in each animal. Inspired by a wide-range of inspirations, work continued on the mural over the next year and a half, and Ladd signed the completed work on December 8, 2025 after 586 days and 1,400 hours of painting.

Photo Credit: Anna @mccooknewsnow

I recently visited the Oberlin City Library to see a stairwell mural that completely changed how the space feels turning the walk down to the Youth Room into an immersive jungle filled with animals, books, and layered visual stories. The artist spent more than a year creating it, and the project now includes original music and an upcoming guided audio tour that adds even more depth to the experience.

If you enjoy public art, libraries, or stories about creative work happening close to home, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

One of my favorite lines from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are describes the moment when “the ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around.” That was the exact feeling I had walking into the Oberlin City Library and seeing the stairwell leading down to the Youth Room.

From the first step, the space surrounds you. Greenery, animals, water, and sky climb across the walls and ceiling, and the stairway becomes more than a passage it becomes a story.

The mural, created by educator and self-taught artist Ladd Wendelin, invites viewers into a jungle world filled with animals and books woven throughout the scenes. While Wendelin drew inspiration from science, literature, art, and pop culture, what the mural ultimately means is left to the viewer each person finds their own story inside it.

Tigers read. An octopus studies a book. Parrots pick at pages. An alligator moves through painted water while monkeys swing overhead and elephants stride across the wall. Everywhere you look, there are details some playful, some symbolic, some personal.

The immersive mural, titled The Jungle Books, spans more than 300 square feet of wall and ceiling space and includes more than 265 hand-drawn animals representing ecosystems from around the world. The connecting thread throughout is discovery — and the role books play in it.

“I wanted the mural to feel like something you step into and become a part of not just something you passively observe,” Wendelin said. “Just as the mural is a world unto itself, I wanted it to encourage people to explore the undiscovered worlds found in books.”

The project began in May 2024 after the Friends of the Library approached Wendelin about creating something for the stairwell leading to the Youth Room. His answer came quickly: a jungle.

He created rough concept sketches, later approved by the library board, and began painting without projectors, stencils, or tracing tools. Instead, he scaled drawings by hand and built each animal through layered acrylic paint.

Using mostly inexpensive craft acrylics, Wendelin developed what he describes as “painted drawings” expressive, detailed figures built gradually through multiple layers of color and line.

He began at the ceiling even though he hadn’t originally planned to paint it after realizing the immersive effect needed to start overhead. From there, the jungle worked its way downward.

The mural took approximately 584 days and more than 1,400 hours to complete, often painted in two- to four-hour sessions around a full-time teaching schedule.

Each animal required multiple layers. Some took days. Others took weeks.

“It was really a problem-solving process,” Wendelin said. “There were no second chances on many of these pieces. Once it was on the wall, it had to work.”

Despite the scale and complexity, Wendelin has no formal art training. He considers himself self-taught and draws inspiration from folk and outsider artists, children’s book illustration, natural history, theater, and pop culture.

That blend shows in the final result. Some animals read books. Others try to eat them. Some appear to understand what they’ve found. Others are still figuring it out. The tone is playful and thoughtful without feeling heavy.

Look closely and the mural becomes personal. Certain animal groupings represent family. Favorite species appear by design. A trunk of books sits at the center of the story discovered by animals who must decide what to do with knowledge.

In Wendelin’s imagined backstory, explorers left the books behind. Some animals evolve quickly enough to read them. Others don’t yet understand what they’re seeing. It’s imaginative, but also grounded in curiosity and learning, fitting for a science teacher and lifelong reader.

What makes the mural especially striking is where it lives not in a gallery or museum, but in a working library stairwell in northwest Kansas. It was created for the people who use that space every day especially kids heading downstairs to the Youth Room. The scale surprises visitors. The detail rewards slow looking. The space invites imagination. You don’t just walk through it you enter it.

The experience is also expanding beyond what visitors see. Wendelin is developing a guided audio tour that visitors will be able to start at the top of the stairs and listen to as they move through the mural. The tour shares backstory, artistic choices, and hidden details woven into the scenes, allowing viewers to experience the work through the artist’s own narration.

The audio component includes original music created specifically for the mural by his collaborator Eric Watkins, also known as DJ thatbigdudewithglasses. The custom soundtrack was designed to match the mood and movement of the jungle environment and adds another immersive layer to the experience. Visitors will be able to choose different listening styles including jungle sounds and chill-hop while viewing the mural.

Together, the narration and music turn the stairwell into something closer to a guided story walk than a traditional art display.

The Jungle Books mural is open to the public at the Oberlin City Library, 104 E. Oak.

Anna LaBay, McCook News Now

Inspirations

"We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream."

- Upanishads

"The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man."

- Charles Darwin

"That very night in Max's room a forest grew and grew - and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day..." - from Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak

Michelangelo, a 1509 poem to Giovanni Da Pistoia while working on the Sistine Chapel ceiling

I've already grown a goiter from this torture,

hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy

(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison).

My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's

pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,

my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,

above me all the time, dribbles paint

so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,

my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,

every gesture I make is blind and aimless.

My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's

all knotted from folding over itself.

I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts

are crazy, perfidious tripe:

anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.

Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.

I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

Many inspirations from a wide variety of pop culture sources informed and inspired The Jungle Books.

Click the links below to discover the unique individuals, artists, art, film, and music that makes this mural a masterpiece.

ART

The belief that art does not belong in art galleries but wherever there's a wall.

“The Dream” - Henri Rousseau

“Starry Night” - Vincent Van Gogh

“Garden of Earthly Delights” - Heironymous Bosch

Sistine Chapel ceiling - Michelangelo

Illustrations from The Divine Comedy - Gustave Dore

“Snowy Heron, or Great Egret” - Plates 30A and 242 -James John Audubon

“A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” - George Seurat

Rudolph Wendelin

(NOTE from the ARTIST: Rudolph, my grandfather's cousin, is my second-cousin twice-removed.

I did meet Rudolph once before he passed, and drew many inspirations from his mural at Rawlin County Museum. Now there's two murals, by two Wendelins, in two adjacent counties in northwest Kansas. Please go see out Rudolph's History of Rawlins County mural in at the museum in Atwood!)