Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 6 and up. See Focus on p.685.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Paulsen choreographs an antic jig of down-on-the-farm frolics in this warm comedy set a few years after WW II. The 11-year-old narrator (who has spent a good portion of his life being shipped off to various relatives) has never seen anything like the Larson homestead, where he is sent to spend the summer; nor has he witnessed anyone like second cousin Harris, prankster extraordinaire. Initiation to country life includes a swift kick in the head by Vivian the cow, run-ins with an angry rooster and the Larson's spirited pet lynx, as well as assorted dares and humiliations conducted by nine-year-old Harris, who eventually becomes a cherished friend. Days are filled with a mixture of tough work and rough play and sometime during the course of his visit the city boy--parented by a couple of ``puke drunks''--learns the real meaning of ``home.'' On the Larson farm, readers will experience hearts as large as farmers' appetites, humor as broad as the country landscape and adventures as wild as boyhood imaginations. All this adds up to a hearty helping of old-fashioned, rip-roaring entertainment. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-At 11, the unnamed narrator has already been shipped between numerous relatives to protect him from his parents who are "mean drunks." When he is finally left with some distant relatives on a secluded farm, he has no idea what is waiting for him in the form of his reckless, crude, trouble-making younger cousin Harris. The boy is soon caught up in his cousin's wild schemesAfrom wrestling 300 pound pigs to taking on a boy-kicking cow named Vivian to trying to motorize a bicycle, and much more. There is plenty of profanity in these pages and a nasty incident is included in which the narrator challenges Harris to urinate on an electric fence with painful results. For those not put-off but such things, there is loads of humor here and a great story about the joy of finding a place to belong. Narrator Steven Boyer does an excellent job of capturing the humor in the novel by Gary Paulsen (Yearling Books, 1995), providing the boys with distinct voices that perfectly capture their personalities.-Deanna Romriell, Salt Lake City Public Library, UT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Set in the 1950s, the funny, earthy look at farm life, as viewed by an eleven-year-old city boy, includes laugh-out-loud passages as well as heaps of nostalgia. The narrator has been sent to live with relatives as a respite from his alcoholic parents. The book centers on his relationship with his nine-year-old cousin Harris and their exploits, experiments, and accidents during one memorable summer. What the two can't think of to try isn't worth telling! From HORN BOOK 1993, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
As the boy explains, he's 11 years old that early-50's summer when a deputy sheriff dumps him with distant relatives on a north country farm--one in a long succession of makeshifts arranged in lieu of the parents who drink Four Roses neat from jelly jars and are ``pretty much mean whenever they [are] conscious.'' The Larsons are sturdy, rough folk; Knute is virtually silent, though he's the source of his nine-year-old son Harris's richly profane vocabulary, which invariably elicits harsh (but ineffective) blows from ``strapping'' sister Glennis. In Harris's charge, the boy learns, the hard way, to avoid the cow with a brutal kick and the mouse-devouring ``cat'' that's actually a lynx. Ignored by their busy elders, Harris's imagination regularly gets the two into freewheeling ``trouble'' as dangerous as it is hilarious--trouble involving the two giant horses, or a runaway bike fitted with Harris's mother's gasoline washing-machine motor. By summer's end, the boy has learned to match Harris's wild pranks (he challenges Harris to urinate on an electric fence, with the expected result) and has fathomed the true humanity of the characters he so vividly and comically describes (the hired man gulping pancakes, syrup in his beard, is unforgettable). Just when he and the Larsons begin to regard each other as family, the boy is wrenched away. Poignantly, after one lonely letter from Harris, the book ends. The fecund Paulsen continues to extend his range: an earthy, wonderfully comic piece. (Fiction. 11-15)
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