This is the classic description of urban childhood in the 1950's. Though the book is played for laughs, and they are fairly frequent, it does remind me of my own past, in the inner city of a mid-sized Canadian city. In this world of helicopter parents and screen captivated children one could do a good deal worse than to revisit the lives laid out before one here.
The world presented by this book is no less dangerous than the streets your children will find today, and no more dangerous to those who are acclimatized to them, unless you are an inhabitant of a disadvantaged slum. It is a book written to calm down parents who were just getting used to their lives in the city, after the upsets of WWII and the Depression. It holds up well, and should be read by parents and children alike. It helps both parties to chill out. ( )

I got this book in the mail the other day from a childhood friend who'd found it in the book corner of an antique store. I researched it a bit and found out it was actually a bestseller when it was new, over fifty years ago, and went through several printings and paperback editions too before disappearing into that limbo of former bestsellsers. But sometimes what comes around goes around (or is it the other way around?), because I see this book was just reissued as a paperback last year. And it richly deserves it, no kidding.

Robert Paul Smith grew up in the 1920s and that's the period of his childhood he's mostly writing about, although he intersperses his memories with comments of his present life (or the mid-1950s when he wrote the book). I grew up in the 1950s, but many of the childhood activities Smith writes about were still happening then: playing Red Rover or Statues; finding a length of clothesline to tie each other up with or make bolos or lassos or jump ropes (girls only, of course); the endless variety of things to do with horse chestnuts; running through hoses or sprinklers on a hot summer day; building a tree house or clubhouse with found or filched scraps of lumber and other stuff. In fact Smith's stories of that homemade hut are utterly hilarious. He tells of what a magnificent structure it seemed at the time, but in hindsight he realizes it was really not much bigger that "a big doghouse," and "when there were more than two of us in it, no one of us could move." And of course there were the rules, passwords and oaths involved in club memberships. I remembered doing all this stuff; and it also brought to mind those long-ago Little Lulu comics, with Tubby, Willy, and Iggy and the "no girls allowed" sign on their clubhouse. He talks about wanting fireworks, knives and, of course, that BB-gun that was made so famous again in the 80s by little Ralphie in Jean Shepherd's Christmas Story.

My friend's note said he was sending me this book because it reminded him so much of my own memoir, ReedCityBoy (2004), and I had to admit he was right. I had written of many similar memories, despite the fact that I was a child of the 50s and wrote down my stories nearly fifty years after Smith did. Maybe childhood hasn't changed all that much when you come right down to it. Every kid has to learn things at his own rate and in his own time.

My copy of "WHERE DID YOU GO?" "OUT" "WHAT DID YOU DO?" "NOTHING" is an old faded 1957 hardcover edition, and in the flyleaf is laboriously written in a schoolboy's hand, the awkward cursive script from a fountain pen blurred and blotted, "To Mrs. Cissel, from George Earle Pierpont Mountcastle. January 30, 1958"

In January 1958 I'd just turned 14. I like to think that this book - brand new then - was a gift to a favorite teacher from a bookish, bespectacled kid like I was. If this is true, then I will say to young Master Mountcastle: "Good choice, George. I hope Mrs. Cissel appreciated it."

This is a very enjoyable read, or as kids today are wont to say, "It's a really fun book." ( )

My parents had very random books on their big bookcase in the living room, and I never saw either of them read a one. Not much in the way of children's lit. However, I spent thousands of hours relaxing behind the couch going through them,. (And hogging one of the heat registers in the winter.) This is one I read and re-read, so I do remember it with great fondness.