Youngsters who have recently come of an age to read for themselves will be delighted with an account of Benjamin Franklin's boyhood written just for them. Ben is a boy worth knowing, a lively boy, interested in everything, ambitious, fun-loving. And his world is full of interest — the simple Franklin home, with the candle-making shop in front, the Latin School and Writing School that he attended so briefly, the holidays that he and his friends spent swimming in the pond, or sailing on the bay, his work as a printer's apprentice, beginning when he was only twelve years old.

When Ben Franklin was a lad in little, muddy Boston of the long ago, boys who wanted adventure might run away to sea, or off into the wilderness with the Indians. But right in his home town Ben found plenty of excitement in people, in things and in books. His family could not afford to pay for much schooling, so he taught himself. He had an inventive mind, a great curiosity about nature and how things work. He wanted to learn a trade; then he would be ready to take care of himself in a new scene.

Years later, people who had known him as a boy were not surprised to read of his remarkable inventions. They recalled his first experiments in Boston. His famous Poor Richard's Almanac did not surprise them. They remembered the smart pieces he had written for his brother's newspaper when he was just an apprentice. They were proud of him. The great Doctor Franklin had become the best-loved citizen of the United States. Today he is counted one of the greatest men in American history, the man who did more different things well than any other man. He is remembered not only for his service to the nation in the Revolutionary War, but for his contributions to our everyday life.

Augusta Stevenson has chosen well the details to tell about the boy Franklin even as she told about the young Lincoln. Abe Lincoln: Frontier Boy has been in increasing demand since its publication some years ago, each year more than the year before. Parents, teachers and librarians are unqualified in their praise of it. Many youngsters write to Miss Stevenson about it. Her devoted young followers will find in Ben Franklin a story they will like just as much.

She has worked with children for many years. She knows how to choose the words they understand. She can tell them a story simply and clearly. She knows how to choose incidents to amuse them, to appeal to them. And these incidents which she selects reveal in the boy Franklin the qualities that, developed, were to make him the notable, the many-sided American. So the youngster starts a firm acquaintance which ripens into full knowledge as later reading gives him the long career of one who was not only a great personage but a most delightful person.

From the dust jacket