No. 336 - Poor Richard's Almanack

I began reading 39 Clues, mentioned in Post No. 298, to my kids before bed. Tonight in Chapter 5 of The Maze of Bones, the first book in the series, we read:

She got to the Fs and found it immediately: a tiny book, so tattered it was falling apart. The cover was decorated with a red-and-white woodblock print of Colonial farmers. The title was faded, but she could still make it out: POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK, For the Year 1739, by Richard Saunders.

A few sentences later we read:

"Wait a second," Dan said."If this was written by Richard Saunders what's it doing under F?"

We then read that Richard Saunders was a pseudonym for Benjamin Franklin.

Wikipedia says that the Almanack appeared continually from 1732 to 1758. It was a best seller for a pamphlet published in the American colonies with about 10,000 copies printed per year.

The Almanack contained the calendar, weather, poems, sayings and astronomical and astrological information. Franklin also included the occasional mathematical exercise. It is chiefly remembered for being a repository of Franklin's aphorisms and proverbs, many of which live on in American English. These maxims typically counsel thrift and courtesy, with a dash of cynicism.