One of Rudyard Kipling's most enduringly popular works, Captains Courageous is a stirring coming-of-age story. Harvey Cheyne, the pampered fifteen-year-old son of an American millionaire, is sailing to Europe when he falls overboard. Saved from drowning by a New England fishing schooner, he finds his rough new companions unimpressed by his wealth and shocked by his ignorance. He will have to prove his worth in the only way the captain and crew will accept: through the slow and arduous mastery of skills upon which their common survival depends.
With an Introduction by Marilyn Sides and an Afterword by Jane Yolen
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay, the son of an Anglo-Indian professor of architectural sculpture. There he was brought up in the care of "ayahs," or native nurses, who taught him Hindustani and the native lore that always haunted his imagination and can be seen reflected in
The Jungle Books. At the age of six, he was sent to England to be educated and returned to India in 19=883 to embark on a career in journalism, writing the news stories as well as the tales and poems that began to make his reputation. After seven years, he went back to England, the literary star of the hour. He married an American and stayed in Vermont off and on from 1892 to 1894. Then he returned to the English countryside, where he remained, except for a few trips abroad, for the rest of his life. The author of innumerable stories and poems, Rudyard Kipling is best known for
Soldiers Three (1888),
The Light That Failed (1890),
The Jungle Books (1894-95),
Captains Courageous (1897),
Stalky & Co. (1899),
Kim (1901), and
Just So Stories (1902). Among many other honors, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.
Marilyn Sides is the author of a collection of short stories,
The Island of the Mapmaker's Wife and Other Tales, and of a novel,
The Genius of Affection. She teaches literature and fiction writing at Wellesley College.
Jane Yolen, called "the Hans Christian Andersen of America"(
Newsweek), has authored 335 books, including
Owl Moon,
The Devil's Arithmetic, and
How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight. Her books and stories have won two Nebulas, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Golden Kite Award, two Christopher Medals, a National Book Award nomination, and the Jewish Book Award, among others. She won the World Fantasy Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the Science Fiction Poetry Association Grand Master Award, the Catholic Library's Regina Medal, the Kerlan Medal from the University of Minnesota, the 2012 du Grummond Medal, and the Smith College Alumnae Medal. Six colleges and universities have given her honorary doctorates.
