Author Description

Edward Edson Lee (1884-1944), who wrote under the pen name of Leo Edwards, was a popular children's literature author in the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote five series of books, including the Jerry Todd series of sixteen books and the Poppy Ott series of eleven books, and both series were wildly popular. All of the series were inter-related in some way; the Todd and Ott stories took place in the town of Tutter, Illinois, a fictional town modeled on the town of Utica, which Lee experienced in his childhood. The supporting characters in the Todd and Ott books -- "Red" Meyers, "Scoop" Ellery, and "Peg" Shaw -- were real boys that Lee befriended around the time he began writing the stories. In his autobiography, Where's the Rest of Me? Ronald Reagan wrote that, growing up in Tampico, Illinois, he had a boyhood much like Jerry Todd. "When I was a kid, there was this series of hardcover juvenile adventure books featuring a character named Jerry Todd. They were something like the Hardy Boys but they had a lot of humor mixed in with the adventure"--Stan Lee Rediscover the wonderful classic adventure stories of Poppy Ott in this reprint edition!