Rollicking Ethan Allen was one of a large happy family of boys and girls. He was the biggest, strongest boy in Cornwall. Some said in all western Connecticut!

His little sister Lyddy thought so. When she fell out of the sleigh one cold, snowy afternoon, eight-year-old Ethan jumped right after her. Though Mr. Allen couldn't turn the sleigh around at once, he had no fears for Lyddy. He knew Ethan would take good care of her.

The boys admired Ethan, too. When one of his brothers took a ducking in the icy brook, Ethan plunged in to save him. But Ethan, despite his stout heart and strong arm, wondered if they would be able to get out. How Ethan and his brother escaped, and how he became good friends with the Indians, make thrilling reading.

As for the schoolmaster, he thought Ethan was too full of mischief. For when Master Dean went to sleep at his desk, it was Ethan who thought of tying him in his chair and hoisting it high in the air. The other boys helped—but Ethan took the blame and the punishment.

All Connecticut heard about his escapade the time he rode a wild moose down the river. He must have been the most daring boy in the whole colony.

But his mother thought her big son had a fine mind as well as a brave—and daring—heart. In the long winter evenings, when the heavy snows fell, a huge fire leaped on the hearth in the Allen cabin. The children had good times crunching maple sugar, while Mrs. Allen put apples in the oven to bake for breakfast. Her husband read aloud from John Locke, and Ethan lay before the fire, listening to the great, noble words about independence and liberty.

Those words sank deep into his mind. When he was a man, it was for independence and freedom that he struggled as a leader of the Green Mountain Boys.

"In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress" he surprised the British fort at Ticonderoga into surrender—an exploit that secured the frontier in the Revolution for many a day.

In the adventures of the boy Ethan Allen may be seen those qualities of rugged thinking for himself, of love of liberty, of devotion to his locality and his neighbors that were to make him the traditional and representative Vermonter.

This is a stirring addition to the Childhood of Famous Americans Series by the author of the popular James Fenimore Cooper: Leatherstocking Boy and Jim Bowie: Boy with a Hunting Knife. 

From the dust jacket