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.

Maybe it’s because his mother was a teacher. Or maybe it’s because he spent so much of his life in classrooms—first as a curious first grader, then as a hopeful college student, later as a seminarian, and now as a visiting writer who travels to schools all over the country. Whatever the reason, school has always been at the heart of Donald Davis’s stories, and this book gathers his very favorite school adventures.

The hills and small towns of western North Carolina in the 1950s come to life in this collection of stories by master storyteller Donald Davis. He’s shared his tales everywhere—from the World’s Fair to the Smithsonian to the National Storytelling Festival—and now he invites readers into the adventures of his own childhood. His stories follow him from his earliest school days all the way to the moment he begins to understand the big changes happening in the world, including the loss of friends during the Vietnam War.