When James Whitcomb Riley was born, his brother Johnty promptly nicknamed him "Bud." The name stuck. This is the story of Bud Riley's happy boyhood in the little town of Greenfield, Indiana, from his birth in a little two-room cabin till the glorious day when his father came home from the Civil War.

Bud was a lively boy, always ready for fun, and if there wasn't any going on he was able to start some. Almost as soon as he could talk he was making up rhymes and jingles. And then he was drawing and painting, and reciting pieces, and putting on shows, and comically imitating children or grownups, making fun for everyone. He had imagination and he was just as original as he could be.

When his mother made him his first pants and he found to his horror there weren't any pockets in them, who but Bud would have thought of cutting pockets with an ax! Bud and Johnty plagued 'Lizabeth-Ann and the Raggedy Man just as in the poems written long after, and listened to Orphant Annie's wonderful stories and swam in the Old Swimmin' Hole. He and his chums had a "store," and barn shows, and a circus in the very ring the real circus had used.

When the Civil War came and the men and older boys of Greenfield marched away, there was plenty for the youngsters to do at home. In those dark days people were glad to hear Bud Riley speak a funny piece or clown a little—they needed a laugh now and then.

The amusing stories and bright pictures here bring back delightfully those pleasant bygone days. The village life lives again—the firelit hearth in the Riley cabin, the four-poster and the trundle-bed, the tavern where the stages stopped on the old National Road, dusty summer streets and the cool Brandywine, the Fourth of July and the torchlight parade. And out of these emerges a clear portrait of the inimitable boy who was to keep a boy's heart all his life, who was to become America's favorite poet of childhood and one of our greatest nature poets. You will read his poems now with better understanding and an even greater joy.

Minnie Belle Mitchell grew up in Greenfield too and she married a man who had been Riley's playmate. She heard the two men often tell about the pranks of their youth. She knew all the boys and girls who were his close friends in the "airly days." 

From the dust jacket