Islander Allen Acree Johnson, Jr. recently received what all writers wish for — validation.

The author is the recipient of an Independent Publishers’ Moonbeam Silver Medal award, for his three-book series, “The Blackwater Novels,” published by Premium Press America. Johnson’s series of chapter books is written for fourth and fifth graders.

According to the publisher, “The books illustrate the joys and perils of growing up in the great outdoors in the south of the 1930s.”

And perils there were.

The first book, “My Brother’s Story,”  begins with a tale of two brothers separated by tragic circumstances when they are very young. Neither knows he has a sibling. ­Each lands in a different family.  One boy is adopted by kind, well-off people who live on an idyllic farmstead. His brother ends up abused and hungry and unwanted. Each boy seems to know that something is incomplete. Each is not whole.

As the story unspools, the boys are separated further. The reader, already involved after just a few pages, is vexed. A thread of danger and suspense runs throughout.  A series of Huck Finn-type adventures featuring hurtling trains and even crocodiles, are faced and dealt with. But will they find each other?

Through coincidence, luck and the kindness of strangers met along the way, they just might meet again. There is reason to hope.

THE ISLANDER is a writer, a musician and a bit of a ‘Renaissance man.’ Yet above all, he is a quintessential Southern gentleman.

The books are a reflection of Johnson’s own youth in the deep South, he said.

They were good memories.

Readers will see or perhaps relive a time when there was nothing better than being outdoors and on your own, building a fort or wading in the creek.  Such an afternoon is  only topped by being called home for supper.

“I had the good fortune of growing up with the space and freedom to be outside, have adventures, explore, and get into trouble,”  he said. “I am grateful to my Southern past for giving me the rich experiences to draw on in writing the Blackwater Novels.”

THE ILLUSTRATED books are set in the 1930s along the fictional Blackwater River and Blackwater swamp, near the town of Turpentine, Ga., and in the countryside near a very real Birmingham, Ala.

Johnson modeled his book after his own youth and peopled it with those he knew. At home, there was a cook, chauffeur, maid, and butler. And being in the South in the 1940s and 1950s those workers were African American.

“They were family to me,” he said. “And made us behave. Our cook, Nettie, taught me about being honest.”

All were memorable, he said.

“I grew up with good people,” he said.

He was  particularly fond of their cook, Dovie.

“She called me ‘Bub’ and let me mooch fried chicken or biscuits before dinner.”

Another character was inspired by Maggie, who cooked for his grandparents.

When it came to writing about the South, writing about Black characters was simply organic, he explained.

“I feel that I am part Black myself,” he said.

THE AUTHOR was born in 1936, in Mountain Brook, Ala., an affluent suburb of Birmingham.

He concedes he was boy who grew up in privileged circumstances. It was that he said, that gave him the freedom of exploration.

Johnson comes from old Southern money. A great grandson of a Baptist minister, his grandfather, Crawford Johnson, Sr., purchased the exclusive franchise rights to bottle and distribute Coca-Cola in Birmingham. It was 1902.

The company began with one employee, a mule named ‘Bird’ and a foot-powered bottling machine,  he said.

It is now the third-largest Coca-Cola bottling company in North America. Johnson himself served on the Board of Directors of company for 41 years.

JOHNSON DID a bit of everything as a young man.

When he was 13, Johnson was sent off to the very exclusive Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. There he discovered jazz guitar and began writing poetry. He returned to Alabama for college, but left to take up farming, growing strawberries and lilies on land he bought in Florida using an inheritance.

“It was an early version of the 1960s lifestyle,” he explained.

In 1959, he was drafted into the Army. He returned and completed a degree in botany at the University of Miami in 1964.

He had other adventures, later moving to Middlebury, Vt., where he stayed for 23 years. There he married and had two children. He also founded the non-profit Vermont State Craft Center at Frog Hollow.

His books, are very positive books, he says.

“People tell stories to encourage each other,” he said. “I want to do that.”

And I want to have them [my books] read, he added.

But getting the word out about his books is a struggle.

“Having this recognition and those silver stickers to put on my books, is huge,” he said.

There have been positive reviews. Nation public radio featured the book. Johnson is proud to point to a review by the journalist, John Seigenthaler, Sr., the host of ‘Words on Words,’ and the founding editor of USA Today.

He wrote: “I want to tell you, having read [these books] boys and girls and their parents and grandparents are all going to enjoy getting into these stories. I enjoyed them, more than I can tell you. The first one I ran across, captured my imagination, caught me, pulled me inside. ”

The author wanted to emphasize that while the books are aimed at young boys, “I guarantee they are also a fun read for girls and grown-ups.”

For Johnson, it is a celebration. “I had a wonderful boyhood,” he said. “It was wall to wall fun.”

Johnson will sign his books  from 3 to 5 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 14 at Island Books.