Jane Yolen is the award-winning author of over three hundred
children's books including Last Laughs- Prehistoric Epitaphs and
Last Laughs- Animal Epitaphs, Bad Girls (with Heidi E. Y. Stemple);
Owl Moon, a Caldecott Medal Winner; the How Do Dinosaurs . . . ?
series, and Sea Queens. She has been called the Hans Christian
Andersen of the Americas. Jane lives in Western Massachusetts and
Scotland.
Wendell Minor has designed more than two thousand book covers and
written and/or illustrated more than fifty children's books,
including many in collaboration with Jean Craighead George. Recent
titles include Trapped!, How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow?, and If
You Were a Panda Bear. Wendell has collaborated with Rob Burleigh
on Night Flight- Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic , Abraham
Lincoln Comes Home, If You Spent a Day with Thoreau at Walden Pond,
and Into the Woods- John James Audubon Lives His Dream.
Inspired by the life of William “Billy” Franklin, son of Benjamin
Franklin, this first-person account conveyed in lengthy free verse
opens in Philadelphia, 1739, when rowdy Billy is eight years old;
eventually, a new tutor inspires a love of reading, and the elder
Franklin allows the younger to bear witness to a meeting of the
Leather Apron Club, 12 friends who meet “weekly to discuss issues
of morality, philosophy, and politics,” as well as read at the
Club’s library, “the first free lending library in the United
States,” per an author’s note. Interspersing quotes from Poor
Richard’s Almanack, Yolen makes Billy’s emotions relatable to young
audiences: “Pappy... has written the best-known Book/ in all of
Philadelphia,/ printed on his own Press—/Poor Richard’s Almanack./
It is full of sayings to make people wise,/ though if you ask me, I
think it is a little boring.” Muted watercolors by Minor offer
sketch-like, realistic white figures in this historical fiction,
which may appeal more to adults. Front matter includes a note about
capitalizations; back matter includes more historical context and
information, as well as an author’s note.
—Publishers Weekly
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