From the very first moment when the captain of the schooner Cockspur and his mate hurried ashore with "bloodcurdling" news to report, to the final reading of the message from King Charles, in which he ordered Governor Endicott to discharge and release the Quaker prisoners, young readers will follow, with avid interest, this fascinating tale of early Colonial days in Boston and Providence.

Readers, boys and young adults, will find themselves transported to the dangerous days when the Quakers "invaded" Massachusetts, and Dan and his sister, Prudence, valiantly sacrificed their own safety to do what they believed right.

"When the schooner Cockspur is tied up at Boston harbor, its captain and mate hasten to inform officialdom that witches, 'she-devils in bonnets,' are aboard the Shallow, not a day offshore. Young Dan Wilkins watches their arrival and learns what a hard-bought thing that their right to live is, under red-coat Colonialism.

"The young in this country need to know how the Colonials strove for secular no less than religious freedom. Gray Bonnets, the struggle by the Quakers to establish their sect in Massachusetts, is valid American history. But first and foremost it is an exciting story of real people in the days of Roger Williams. The bookburning on Boston Common in 1656 has a message for young America today. No one who despises though-control could do better than recommend to these young, Slater Brown's Gray Bonnets, superbly illustrated by Fritz Kredel."

I. L. Salomon

Author, Critic and Teacher of English in the New York City Schoold.

From the dust jacket