Jibby Jones : A story of Mississippi River adventure for boys by Butler
"Jibby Jones : A story of Mississippi River adventure for boys" by Butler is a children’s adventure novel written in the early 20th century. The story follows a crew of Riverbank boys who befriend the tall, literal, and endearingly odd Jibby Jones, a newcomer with an author father, as they dive into river mischief, fishing contests, and the tantalizing hint of a hidden pirate hoard. It’s a humorous, good‑natured tale of ingenuity,
friendship, and life on the Mississippi. The opening of the novel introduces Birch Island’s stilted cottages and the boys—Tad, Skippy, Wampus, and the narrator—meeting Jibby, whose giant “jib” nose, calm logic, and far‑flung river anecdotes make him unforgettable. After Jibby fixes their balky motor and charms them with his offbeat thinking (like calling his too‑small clothes his “big suit”), the group pranks him with a tall tale about nose‑diving for pearls; Jibby dives anyway and, to everyone’s shock, surfaces with a large pearl that keeps his family on the island. A rainy‑day story from Jibby about the land pirate John A. Murrell—plus the clue “Riverbank” and the lone‑pine signal—spurs them to form a treasure‑hunting club, while a sapling‑catapult fishing stunt flings a carp into a tree, fueling comic debates about animals “climbing.” The boys then compete for Uncle Oscar’s fishing prize: Jibby seems to “smell” fish but actually wins by smart preparation—choosing a proven hole and “scouring” worms per Izaak Walton—before the section closes with the narrator’s dog Rover back home and howling, hinting that nightfall and new trouble lie ahead. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Butler, Ellis Parker, 1869-1937 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Dove, Arthur Garfield, 1880-1946 |
| Title | Jibby Jones : A story of Mississippi River adventure for boys |
| Original Publication | Boston, MA: Houghton & Mifflin Company, 1923. |
| Credits | Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 89.1 (6th grade). Easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres |
| Subject | Boys -- Juvenile fiction |
| Subject | Adventure and adventurers -- Juvenile fiction |
| Subject | Mississippi River -- Juvenile fiction |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 76547 |
| Release Date | Jul 22, 2025 |
| Last Update | Jul 25, 2025 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 384 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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