In some of the books John Rowe Townsend read as a child, "wicked children--that is, children who did almost any of the things that children would normally want to do--were duly punished and warned where their sins would ultimately lead them," he wrote in an autobiographical essay for the Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS). "Goody-goodies were praised and rewarded. It was all rather alarming." When Townsend was eight, he decided to write his own book, one more to his liking. The Crew's Boat, which covered the pages of five notebooks, was written in pencil and illustrated with crayon. It told the story of a family whose twelve children decide to build a boat by hollowing out a tree trunk. Then they set sail around the world, from ocean to ocean, conquering the primitive tribes they find on distant islands and teaching them civilized ways. After completing...