Abraham Lincoln

Young Americans will be fascinated by this fresh and lively biography of a national hero whose life-story unfailingly appeals to them. They meet Abraham Lincoln first as the backwoods boy who was always borrowing books and asking questions, who helped his father build a "half-faced camp' in the Indiana wilderness, played tricks on his stepmother and spelled down the other pupils of the "blab-school." They see him as a lanky youth who built flatboats, kept store, ran a ferry, and fought river pirates, hand-to-hand a wiry giant who could out-wrestle any man for miles around, "make a cat laugh" with his funny stories, yet sit up all night studying.
They follow "Honest Abe" as the young lawyer rode circuit through Illinois, making friends wherever he went; as the husband and father who milked the family cow and romped with is boys until the neighbors declared that he was spoiling them; as the beloved "Father Abraham" who guided our country through tragic years, yet found time to comfort dying soldiers, to help repair the White House water pump, and to write his wife about the disappearance of his little son's pet goat.
Mrs. Meadowcroft makes Lincoln "come alive" as a person, and does so in language of directness and simplicity characteristic of Lincoln himself. Her painstaking research has provided accurate backgrounds for actual incidents, expertly chosen to interest young readers.