Southern Jack Tales
The author grew up in the mountains of western North Carolina listening to stories that many kids in America had never heard before. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he was learning old tales that had traveled across the ocean with Scots‑Irish families long ago. In the 1950s, people in the Appalachian Mountains were still telling these stories, most of them about a clever, brave, and sometimes very lucky character named Jack. Versions of Jack appear in almost every culture, which makes him feel familiar no matter where you’re from.
Jack is an everyday hero who faces challenges we all understand—finding work, making friends, standing up to bullies, and figuring out how to handle big, scary problems. Sometimes he succeeds because he’s brave, sometimes because he’s smart, and sometimes because he just keeps going even when things get tough. And every now and then, he wins by pure luck.
