A timeless novel in the spirited tradition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn One of the most popular American authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Pulitzer Prize winner Booth Tarkington was acclaimed for his novels set in small Midwestern towns. Penrod tells of a boy growing up in Indianapolis at the turn of the twentieth century. His friends and his dog accompany him on his many jaunts, from the stage as “the Child Sir Lancelot,” to the playground, to school. They make names for themselves as “bad boys” who always have the most fun. Nearly a century after it was first published to incredible popularity and acclaim, Penrod remains wildly funny and entertaining to adults and children alike. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. Newton Booth Tarkington (1869 – 1946) was an enormously prolific novelist, playwright, and short story writer who chronicled urban middle-class life in the American Midwest during the early twentieth century. He is best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams , and is one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once.  Jonathan Yardley is the book critic of and a columnist for the Washington Post . His books include biographies of Ring Lardner and Frederick Exley. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism in 1981.