A Boy Named Jim

A hardcover release of a darkly comic, cautionary 1907 classic adds whimsical illustrations, interactive lift-flaps and a roaring lion pop-up to the story of a youngster whose forays from home culminate in a "miserable end."

The silence and reluctance of author James A. Lynchs youth has been left behind; he has become a storyteller in the true form of grandfathers everywhere. In A Boy Named Jim, he provides a look into slices of his life. This memoir presents the true story of Lynchs journey from the innocence of childhood in a small midwestern town; through the rollicking good times of the teenage years, college, and navy life; through thirty years of the dark depths of chronic alcoholism; and finally through the process of recovery and sobriety. A Boy Named Jim tells of Lynchs heartbreaks and failures, as well as the miracles and faith that brought him back to reality to live the life of a spiritually peaceful and gracious old man. That morning I finally realized what I had become, what I was, and what I probably would always be: a hopeless, helpless drunk. I didnt amount to anything, never had, and never would. I feared I would probably die in a drunken stupor somewhere, or I would be permanently institutionalized. I didnt realize until sometime later, lying cut and bruised in a strange basement, I had been granted two important things: a moment of clarity and the gift of desperation.

Award-winning illustrator Mini Grey turns her inimitable hand to Hilaire Belloc's classic cautionary tale of Jim- who ran away from his Nurse and was eaten by a Lion! First published in 1907, Belloc's wickedly funny poem describing the sad end of Jim is fabulously illustrated in a magical picture book edition. This is darkly comic, word of warning about the dangers of being spoiled is the perfect tongue-in-cheek corrective for little ones who have been a little overindulged!

Both delightful and wise, Jim the Boy brilliantly captures the pleasures and fears of youth at a time when America itself was young and struggling to come into its own.

It is hockey season at Bennett Elementary School, and Jim's grandfather has bought all the equipment he needs, so if he can practice hard and ignore the taunts of the school bully, the team should be ready for the game with the rival Gators.

The acclaimed National Book Award finalist—“one of the United States’ finest writers,” according to Joshua Ferris, “full of wit, humanity, and fearless curiosity”—now gives us a novel that will join the short list of classics about children caught up in the Holocaust. Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar and unhappy young boy whose family is driven by the German onslaught from the Polish countryside into Warsaw and slowly battered by deprivation, disease, and persecution. He and a handful of boys and girls risk their lives by scuttling around the ghetto to smuggle and trade contraband through the quarantine walls in hopes of keeping their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters alive, hunted all the while by blackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police, not to mention the Gestapo. When his family is finally stripped away from him, Aron is rescued by Janusz Korczak, a doctor renowned throughout prewar Europe as an advocate of children’s rights who, once the Nazis swept in, was put in charge of the Warsaw orphanage. Treblinka awaits them all, but does Aron manage to escape—as his mentor suspected he could—to spread word about the atrocities? Jim Shepard has masterfully made this child’s-eye view of the darkest history mesmerizing, sometimes comic despite all odds, truly heartbreaking, and even inspiring. Anyone who hears Aron’s voice will remember it forever.