Doctor Patrick Mastroianni is a neurological surgeon who has had an enduring interest in children’s literature. At a very young age, he fell in love with Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses and pledged one day to write poetry for children himself. This book is the first realization of that dream. He is semi-retired and lives with his wife, Linda, in Milford, Connecticut. He has one daughter, Elizabeth, an aeronautical engineer. He is an avid skier and hiker and has an interest in particle physics as a hobby.
“On A Summer’s Night” is the first volume in a series of thirteen fantasy adventure stories that I have written in the same format. The text is written in rhyming verse and the vocabulary is designed to be slightly challenging for the young reader. Ideally the books would be read by adult to child or by child with adult assistance. I believe they can be fun learning tools for the motivated child. The book’s animal characters will delight young children and the plot will have enough suspense to keep them engaged. The animal characters vary from book to book but the protagonist remains the same.
In each volume the characters go on an adventure and each of the adventures have a slightly scary part, but in all of the adventures our heroes are brave and overcome the challenges they face and return safe and sound. The real magic of the books, I believe, lies in the verse, the rhymes and bits of whimsy here and there. “On a Summer’s Night” is followed by “On A Halloween Night,” “On a Winter’s Night,” and “On A Night In Springtime,” as well as nine other fantasy adventures.