DANIEL BOONE’S GREAT ESCAPE

Spradlin turns from Texas Rangers (2008) to another frontiersman, Daniel Boone, in this little-known adventure based on a brief statement in his autobiography. While shooting buffalo in the Kentucky woods in February 1778, Shawnee warriors capture the pioneer and lead him to their war chief, Blackfish. Although the Shawnee seek revenge for the murder of their Chief Cornstalk, Boone convinces Blackfish to allow him and his men to live as brothers in the Shawnee village, to return with the Shawnee to Boonesborough in the spring and convince the settlers to surrender. After a long march to Old Chillicothe in Ohio, Boone plans and carries out a daring escape, running 160 miles in four days with only one meal, arriving at Fort Boonesborough in time to warn of the Shawnee’s imminent attack. As dramatic as the tale are Hoyt’s expressively crosshatched line-and-watercolor illustrations, which depict such extraordinary events as Boone’s running the Shawnee’s gauntlet without straying into the exaggeration of a tall tale. Ample evidence of why Boone remains the stuff of legends. (epilogue) (Picture book. 5-8)