Good Work: An Old Florida Adventure of Trouble, Courage, and Growing Up is Book 1 of The Bay Boy Chronicles, a three-book middle-grade adventure series set on Florida's Choctawhatchee Bay in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Alvin Hicks has a nose for trouble, a best friend who knows too many facts, and a father who teaches lessons you don't see coming until you're already wet.
Growing up on Choctawhatchee Bay in the Florida Panhandle, Alvin navigates a world of cast nets and shrimp boats, magnolia trees and pig farms, and the particular freedom of a boy with a shotgun and a packed lunch and nowhere he has to be until dark.
In twelve connected adventures, Alvin learns what experience can teach him—sometimes the hard way.
A pile of magnolia leaves meets a gasoline can and a cowboy plan. A wart disappears in answer to a mother's faithful prayers. At the worst possible moment, red bugs arrive in a very private place. Fifty squirming piglets require catching and holding. A five-foot alligator objects—strongly—to being gigged on a dark bayou before dawn. A burning boat cushion floats away into the night, answering to nobody. A covey of wild quail erupts from the grass at close range, and for two seconds everything stops.
And in a shrimping boat's engine room in the dark, with a tugboat bearing down, a boy discovers exactly what he is capable of when someone who matters believes he can do it.
The Bay Boy Chronicles: True Adventures, Hard-Won Lessons, and Growing Up on the Florida Panhandle is a literary adventure series drawn from a real childhood on a real bay, by a real man who still thinks about the motor turning over on the third pull.
For independent readers ages 10 and up. Accessible for ages 8–9 with read-aloud or guided reading. Each book stands alone.
Each chapter includes Billy's Fact File (real science and natural history behind the story), A Word Worth Knowing (vocabulary in Alvin's own voice), The Hunt (close reading questions that send readers back into the text), and a chapter quiz—all written in the same voice as the narrative.
Designed for independent reading, classroom discussion, family read-aloud, and homeschool use. Supports Common Core ELA skills, including vocabulary, close reading, text-based evidence, and discussion, and reflects the inquiry-based approach of the Next Generation Science Standards. An educational features statement is available at www.dondbrownbooks.com.
"Some lessons you learn from a book. Some you learn from experience. And some lessons come from standing in your backyard in soaking wet shorts with a gnat on your nose, watching your daddy walk back inside after saying exactly what needed to be said and not one word more."— Alvin Hicks
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