Allan Wesley Eckert (January 30, 1931 – July 7, 2011) was an American novelist and playwright who specialized in historical novels for adults and children, and was also a naturalist. His novel Incident at Hawk's Hill (1971) was initially marketed to adults and selected by Reader's Digest Condensed Books. A runner-up for the Newbery Medal, it was afterward marketed as a children's novel and adapted by Disney for a television movie known as The Boy Who Talked to Badgers (1975). Eckert wrote several books of natural history. In addition, he wrote more than 225 episodes of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, for which he received an Emmy Award. His numerous historical novels were popular, including several that were part of his series "The Winning of America". In 1996, one of them was adapted for the stage as 1913: The Great Dayton Flood and premiered at Wright State University, also being produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He wrote the drama Tecumseh for an outdoor production at Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheatre near Chillicothe, Ohio that has been a destination for tourists every summer since 1973. Source: Wikipedia (en)