Bewildered for Three Days: As to Why Daniel Boone Never Wore His Coonskin Cap - Hardcover

Andrew Glass, also a twin, has illustrated many picture books for Clarion, including Ananse’s Feast, The Bourbon Street Musicians, and Crabby Cratchitt. He lives in New York City with his wife.

Gr. 2-3, younger for reading aloud. Glass, the author of many books featuring larger-than-life figures from history, weaves together actual events and contemporary anecdotes about Boone into this otherwise original tale. When portrait painter Chester Harding asks Boone why he chooses to pose bareheaded, Boone explains that, contrary to all the stories, he never wears a coonskin cap. Why not? Boone explains that as a youth he had such headgear; but after a series of hair-raising encounters, culminating in a night spent in a hollow log with a mother raccoon and her kits (while a band of "braves" set up camp only inches away), he swore off coonskin forever. Glass tells the tale in an amiable, folksy way, and the dappled oil-paint art reflects the humor. He gives his intrepid hero a disarming modesty and suggests that Boone learned his legendary woodcraft from Delaware and Lenape friends. In a long afterword, printed in tiny type, the author sketches the rest of Boone's long life and specifies which parts of the tale are his own invention. As tall tales go, it's only a little elongated but well endowed with cliff-hangers and narrow escapes. John Peters
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved