The Ringling brothers—Al, Otto, Alf T., Charles and John—created a grand tradition of pure, wholesome amusement. They took the old-time circus of the mid-19th century and gave it style, character and imagination, and gave America long-remembered happiness.

The Ringling household was a boisterous one. The imaginative, daring brothers were always thinking up exciting things to do to amuse their friends and themselves. Staging circuses, concerts and parades was great fun for the Ringling boys, wherever they lived—Iowa, Illinois or Wisconsin. Al, the oldest of the brothers, was always practicing bareback riding or tightrope walking or juggling Mama's plates. The younger boys—business-like Otto, softspoken Alf T., friendly Charles, John the clown—looked up to Al and happily followed in his footsteps.

The Ringling brothers loved animals and early made them an important part of the shows. There was Billy Rainbow, an old goat who was a featured performer, and there was Champ, a once disreputable horse, traded from a junk man and restored to health by the boys' care, who led many a parade, and an assortment of cats and dogs and badgers and squirrels.

Music, too, played a happy part in the lives of the Ringlings and though times were often hard, Mama and Papa Ringling saw to it that the boys' cherished music lessons were kept up no matter what.

Spirited good fun marks this unusual story of five brothers who in 1882 went "on the road" as real troupers in their first professional venture.

From the dust jacket