Hugh Can Do

by Jennifer Armstrong

There once was a young orphan fellow named Hugh, as poor as a rabbit but as quick as a fox. He traveled for days and dreamed of his fortune, and how he would make it, and where, and how soon.

Genres: Picture Books

27 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1992

About the author

Jennifer Armstrong learned to read and write in Switzerland, in a small school for English speaking children on the shores of Lake Zurich. The school library had no librarian and no catalog – just shelves of interesting books. She selected books on her own, read what she could, and made up the rest. It was perfect. As a result, she made her career choice – to become an author – in first grade. When she and her family returned to the U.S. she discovered that not all children wrote stories and read books, and that not all teachers thought reading real books was important. Nevertheless, she was undaunted. Within a year of leaving college she was a free-lance ghost writer for a popular juvenile book series, and before long published her first trade novel, Steal Away, which won her a Golden Kite Honor for fiction.

More than fifty additional novels and picture books followed, and before long she also tried her hand at nonfiction, winning an Orbis Pictus Award and a Horn Book Honor for her first nonfiction book, Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. In late 2003 she will travel to the South Pole with the National Science Foundation to do research for a book on ice.

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun, almost-metered prose telling a folk tale about a clever boy who is willing to work. Interesting illustrations.

[Jeani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Getting it done and making friends as he does.