Frank the Young Naturalist

Frank the Young Naturalist is the first in the three-volume Gunboat Series. We are introduced to Frank Nelson, who at the time, is about 16. Frank’s father is a wealthy merchant in Boston; and, after his death, Frank’s mother moved to Lawrence, Maine, about 100 miles north of Augusta. Frank has a large collection of specimens of birds and animals, and throughout the book, he and his friends experience adventures as they hunt, fish, and try to co-exist with a community of “Hillers,” disreputable Maine natives who object to newcomers moving into the area. Charles Austin Fosdick (September 6, 1842 – August 22, 1915), better known by his nom de plume Harry Castlemon, was a prolific writer of juvenile stories and novels, intended mainly for young adults. He was born in Randolph, New York, and received a high school diploma from Central High School in Buffalo, New York. He served in the Union Navy from 1862 to 1865, during the American Civil War, acting as the receiver and superintendent of coal for the Mississippi River Squadron. Fosdick had begun to write as a teenager, and drew on his experiences serving in the Navy in such early novels as Frank on a Gunboat (1864) and Frank on the Lower Mississippi (1867). He soon became the most-read author for teens in the post-Civil War era, the golden age of young adult literature. Fosdick once remarked that: "Young men don't like fine literature. What they want is adventure, and the more of it you can get in two-hundred-fifty pages of manuscript, the better fellow you are." Fosdick served up a lot of adventure in such popular book series as the Gunboat Series, the Rocky Mountain Series, the Roughing It Series, the Sportsman's Club Series, and The Steel Horse, or the Rambles of a Bicycle.