This is an earlier work by Nathaniel Hawthorne written for children. Edward Temple, a nine-year-old, is having a tough time, he has recently become blind. He lives with his family who are sensitive to this. To help Edward come to terms with his blindness the father tells the whole family stories.

These stories are childhood experiences of 6 famous people, two of these are Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Johnson. They are moral tales to teach young people good acceptable behaviour and to define gender roles.

Today, reading this feels outdated, this was written for an audience of a different time and expectations. What caught my attention was its structure and how it effortlessly moves between two modes of storytelling.