Charles Boardman Hawes, teacher, editor, and writer, was born in Clifton Springs, New York, on January 24, 1889. He attended school in Bangor, Maine, graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1911, and attended Harvard College as a Longfellow Fellow from 1911 to 1912. He taught at Pennsylvania's Harrisburg Academy for a year and then, in 1916, married Dorothea Cable, with whom he had two sons. Hawes settled with his family in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a seaside town whose rich maritime heritage proved an inspiration for the aspiring young writer. Images of the New England seacoast inform Hawes's two books written for adults, Whaling (1924) and Gloucester by Land and Sea (1928).

One of Hawes's major contributions to American literature was his work in children's periodicals, first as a staff member of The Youth's Companion and later as an associate editor of Open Road, a boys' magazine that continued publication until 1954. Open...