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At age 13, Lanky is already six feet, four inches tall, and his adventures always seem to happen when he tries to help somebody in trouble, or when he gets a well-intentioned idea to make a bad situation better. And then ... wham! Things go horribly wrong. But by using his clever, quirky, and often humorous way of looking at things, Lanky saves the day and all ends well. Lanky is adventurous, full of fun and eager for discovery.
In this second volume, Lanky encounters a crooked traveling salesman conniving to cheat is customers at the annual Village Fair; helps a pair of lonely souls-two elderly neighbors who have long been estranged-find romance; and, with the help of a very devoted and very smart cat, saves his own mother from a terrible fate. In the title story, when a dangerous epidemic races through the isolated mountain village of Claggett Cove, Lanky enlists the help of his Native American friend Billy Red Wing, whose traditional remedies have protected his own daughters from the disease-but who has to overcome the suspicion and bigotry of the villagers before he can use them to cure the imperiled children.
Lanky Tales are funny, thoughtful, and timeless. They're designed for boys and girls who are in the "tween years" (9-12), but above all they are fun, wholesome reading for all the family.
About the author
C. Robert Jones holds degrees from the Universities of South Carolina and Georgia and from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Dijon on a Fulbright grant.
He launched his professional career as a theater director by directing twenty-six shows back to back in four seasons at the Little Theatre of Savannah in Georgia. That was followed by thirty-one years as a college professor, chairing theatre programs at Gardner-Webb University and Mars Hill University.
As a playwright, he has written about fifty plays covering a wide spectrum of styles and genres, among them The Clown and The Spelling Bee, both of which are widely performed before young audiences.
Lanky-a 6'4", 13-year-old boy in a 1913 mountain town-was born in the author's musical "A Belonging Place," in which a country story-teller makes up stories about the character to amuse three local children during long winter nights. Both the fabulist and "his" Lanky stories reappeared in the play's sequel, "Wednesday's Children," and Jones brought Lanky to life as an onstage character in his one-act play, "The Blabbermouth" (www.dramaticpublishing.com). Ever since, both adults and children have appreciated the tales' country flavor, moral uprightness, and the character of a boy who constantly screws up while trying-and eventually succeeding-to make things better.
