Charles Graves has written with vigor and humor of brave, boisterous Captain Smith, his friendship with Pocahontas and Powhatan, his struggles to keep Jamestown going and his rewarding experience as a world explorer.
Charles Parlin Graves, who wrote more than 20 children's books, died Wednesday, August 2nd of cancer in Phelps Memorial Hospital, North Tarrytown, N.Y. He was 61 years old and lived in Irvington‐on‐Hudson, N.Y.
Mr. Graves devoted himself in the last 14 years to writing children's books, mainly biographical, on such people as John F. and Robert F. Kennedy, Benjamin Franklin, Grandma Moses, Nellie Bly, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Muir and Mark Twain.
Earlier, he had been an advertising copy writer and had been with Dancer‐Fitzgerald Sample, Inc., and other agencies. In World War II he served with the Army in the Aleutian Islands and in the Pacific as a lieutenant.
He graduated from the University of Florida in 1933.
Follows a young John Smith in his adventures as a traveling soldier and ends with his return to England. May need to buddy-read the first part of book due to long, difficult location names. Many opportunities to review new geography. Smith escapes his Turkish slave owner by killing him in chapter 4