The Old Tobacco Shop: A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure

A Newbery Honor book from 1921 that unfolds like a fever dream of childhood imagination. Five-year-old Freddie, sent to fetch tobacco for his father, finds himself drawn into a peculiar shop run by Toby Littleback, a hunchback with cryptic warnings about magic tobacco and sinister intentions. Inside, he meets Aunt Amanda, a bizarre old woman who sews and eats pins, and encounters Mr. Punch sitting outside with his cigars. When Freddie disobeys warnings and smokes from the jar shaped like a Chinese man's head, he and his friends find themselves aboard The Sieve, a leaky ship on the Spanish Main, captured by pirates, then escaping with treasure before meeting a Persian rug merchant who grants their heart's deepest desires. What follows is a journey through realms of pure fancy that will alter Freddie forever. The book works as both a rip-roaring adventure and a meditation on the thin membrane between waking life and dreams, between the safe world of home and the terrifying, thrilling unknown.