The flight of Pony Baker : a boy's town story By: W .D. Howells Illustrated By: Florence Scovel Shinn

The Flight of Pony Baker is a novel for children, one of the many stories written by William Dean Howells. It was published by Harper and Brothers in 1902 in New York, New York. It tells the story of a young boy named Pony Baker who, throughout the book, attempts to run away from his home where he lives with his mother, father, and five sisters. The setting of the story is "fifty years ago" in the Boy's Town of Ohio, the state where Howells was born and raised. Plot summary: The story begins with Frank Baker, who is known as "Pony" after one of the boys in Boy's Town calls him by that name, so that he could be distinguished from his cousin Frank Baker. Pony lives in the Boy's Town with his mother, father, and five sisters, whom his mother always wants him to play with. Pony's mother is very overprotective of Pony, which makes her a bad mother when it comes to having fun. Pony's father has done some things that have given Pony the right to run away as well, but it seems to Pony that they were mostly things that his mother had put his father up to, and that his father would not have been half as bad if his mother had not influenced him. One day however, Pony almost loses all his patience after the way his father reacts to Pony being pushed down from third reader to second reader at school. That morning, Pony is asked by his teacher to read to the class, but because it is hot and because Pony was being lazy, he read very poorly despite the fact that Pony is actually a very good reader. His performance causes the teacher to push him down to the second reader. Before class is dismissed, Pony gathers his books and walks out of school towards home. His father advises him to go back to school that afternoon, which continues to upset Pony. Pony heads back to school that afternoon with a plan to run off as soon as school is over. At recess the boys hear word of Pony's plan to run away that very night. After school, the boys tell Pony how he must run away and how they will help him. An older boy named Jim Leonard suggests that Pony go with the Indians and that the Indians would like him and then adopt him into their tribe. Jim offers to find out if there are any Indians living nearer that the reservation that is about 100 miles away from the Boy's Town.... Florence Scovel Shinn (September 24, 1871, Camden, New Jersey – October 17, 1940) was an American artist and book illustrator who became a New Thought spiritual teacher and metaphysical writer in her middle years.[1][2] In New Thought circles, she is best known for her first book, The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925). Shinn expressed her philosophy as: The invisible forces are ever working for man who is always ‘pulling the strings’ himself, though he does not know it. Owing to the vibratory power of words, whatever man voices, he begins to attract. The Game of Life, Florence Scovel Shinn....... William Dean Howells ( March 1, 1837 – May 11, 1920) was an American realist novelist, literary critic, and playwright, nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters".