[2] As an asthmatic child, Radnitz would spend his weekends attending double features with his father, collecting themes that he would use throughout his filmmaking career.
The film helped develop Radnitz's reputation as "a maker of high-quality movies for children and their parents", according to critic Valerie J. Nelson of the Los Angeles Times.
An early retrospective of Radnitz' works at the Museum of Modern Art in 1969 credited his ability to produce family fare that had more "compassion and sophistication than many so-called adult films".
[5] It told the story of an African-American boy living with his sharecropper family in Depression-era Louisiana who longs for an education after his father is sent to prison for stealing food.
Reviewer Howard Thompson of The New York Times wrote that "this beautiful little movie is like a cool, clear dip of mountain spring water" and was made "without one false, hayseed note or drop of sugar".
[2] Radnitz' 1983 film Cross Creek, adapted from the memoir of the same title by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, tells her story of how she started writing while living in central Florida.