When Ernie was five and out in the fields of the Pyle farm with his father, he borrowed his father's knife to cut wild roses for his mother. In the weeds at the end of the field where the roses grew, a snake came straight for his bare feet. He dropped the knife and ran. But he made himself go back for the knife because he had promised his father to return it. And at sunrise next morning he went back a second time to get roses. Asked at breakfast if he was still afraid of snakes, he said his stomach still got scared. His mother smiled at him. "But your feet don't. And that's what counts."

The Pyle farm was near Dana, Indiana, and Ernie's adventure with the snake happened about 1905. But Ernie Pyle never changed very much. Even when he was a newspaper correspondent in World War II, his stomach still got scared but his feet remained brave and took him into one dangerous spot after another with the American GIs he wrote so well about. Famous as he was, he was so natural and simple and even shy that everybody liked him.

Ellen Wilson makes a wonderful story out of his boyhood on an Indiana farm. What might have been ordinary with another boy turned into an adventure when it happened to Ernie, and taught him something, too. For instance, he and his friend Thad dug for relics in an Indian mound on the Pyle farm. Thad found the head of a tomahawk. Ernie claimed it because it was on his farm. Days went by, but Thad didn't come over to play. Ernie had to decide which was more important to him—a tomahawk or a friend.

Or take the composition Ernie had to write in fifth grade, about somebody's proud moment. The other children wrote about Queen Victoria and General Washington and Napoleon. Ernie chose a funny, simple subject. Then he was sure that the teacher would scold him. But she surprised him. The composition, just as he read it aloud in class, is in the book.

In fact, there is so much in the book nobody could possibly tell all about it here—parties, adventures, entertaining Willie the Wanderer, even a Memorial Day in Indianapolis when Ernie, his father and his friend Thad watch the great 500-mile automobile race. The thing to do is to read the book for yourself. You will like it.

Ellen Wilson is a well-known writer of books for children, though this is her first for the Childhood of Famous Americans series. She now lives in Bloomington, Indiana, the home of Indiana University, where Ernie Pyle went to college. In his honor the School of Journalism has named its building Ernie Pyle Memorial Hall.

From the dust jacket