The Jerry Todd Books That Joe Todd Loved as a Kid
(and later reread as an adult)
I read most of the adventures of Jerry Todd books when I was in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades and one of them in the 6th grade – and many of them again in my early 70s. Grace Hecker, a neighbor who lived in the same townhouses as we did on St. Claire in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, introduced me to the Jerry Todd books.
In the 6th grade at Howe Military School, I enthusiastically raised my hand when my teacher Mrs. Kelly asked for volunteers to give an oral book report. After I excitedly gave the report on the Jerry Todd book I was reading, she told me I could do better and that wasn't literature. That one incident stopped my volunteering at Howe. This could have been a major turning point that added to my resolve to run away from Howe instead of going with the program there. But that's another story.
I really identified with Jerry Todd as a kid – sometimes I thought that was me or a brother I never had. In my day you still ran around town having adventures – not like today when every minute is organized and supervised.
About the author: "As a boy during the 1880s and 1890s, Edward Edson Lee found adventure and fun roaming the hills of Utica and swimming in the Illinois & Michigan Canal. And Lee -- better known by his pen name Leo Edwards -- immortalized those memories and shared them with others through more than 50 books written during the 1920s and 1930s.
"Edwards wrote juvenile fiction; his books were a contemporary of works such as The Hardy Boys or Tom Swift. However, what set Edwards apart, said his fans, were the detailed descriptions of the town of Tutter, where almost all of the stories took place." (Melissa Garzanelli) Ron Vasile, an historian, wrote "His childhood memories never left him, and he used boyhood surroundings in shaping his plots.... He credited his Utica teacher, Kate Gardner, for encouraging him to write." (See more here)
Joe's Jerry Todd books
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