J. R. LeMaster and Mary Washington Clarke have here assembled a distinguished collection of essays on the works of Jesse Stuart. A prolific writer, Stuart is at home in many different genres; his poetry, his short stories, his novels, and his autobiographical writings are widely known, and his books for children have enjoyed great popularity. Despite the variety of his work and despite the diversity of the ten essayists' points of view, there emerges from this volume a consistent view of a man whose close contact with the land and the people of his region has produced a distinctive body of...

Could a man who never earned a master's degree tell the nation's teachers and administrators how to run their schools? Jesse Stuart, who had a life-long love of education, did just that.

From Stuart's autobiographical works, J.R. LeMaster has chosen selections that demonstrate his philosophy of learning and teaching, and his philosophy of life. The selections establish a loose chronology of events in Stuart's lifelong education and describe his experience as preschooler, student, teacher, and school administrator.

This multiple perspective, LeMaster suggests, is essential to...