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Walter Edmonds was a writer who lived almost as long as the 20th century lasted, from 1903 to 1998. He mainly wrote historical novels, for adults and for children. His best-known adult novel was Drums Along the Mohawk, and his best-known children’s book was The Matchlock Gun. He wrote several children’s books, most in a picture-book format but with many more words and more sophisticated text than is usual in what we expect from picture books. You can get a feel for the type of children’s book he wrote by noting that The Matchlock Gun was in this format and won the 1940 Newbery Award, awarded for a junior book, not the Caldecott Medal, which is awarded for a picture book.
Edmonds also wrote Two Logs Crossing: John Haskell’s Story, about a young man growing up in New York state in early America, probably in the late 1700s or very early 1800s. This book is an incredible story of a young man, raised by a lazy father who impoverished his family, who upon his father’s death begins the process of waking up from mental and physical slothfulness. John gradually embraces determination, hard work, and a vision for the future, none of which he had had before. He is helped by two mentors, the Judge and a Native American, both of whom take an interest in the boy. John’s rise to usefulness does not come easily, and he has to overcome many obstacles on the road to personal success. By “personal success” I don’t mean financial success, though that eventually does come, but success in the sense of knowing how to work hard, how to provide for a family, and how to act with integrity. These are lessons that all of us, children as well as adults, need to learn and re-learn and put into practice. The story itself is both thrilling and touching. Upper elementary and middle school students will be able to read this book, although it is worth reading for any age reader, including high schoolers and adults. The illustrations add substantially to the text and were done by Tibor Gergely, a talented Hungarian-American artist who painted the pictures for many of the classic Little Golden Books, some of which have been reprinted many times, titles such as Scuffy the Tugboat, The Happy Man and His Dump Truck, and Tootle.