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Title: Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
ISBN: 0553384244
Author:
Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Publicate Date: 2008-04-29
Publish: 2008-04-29
List Price: $12.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $6.65
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $6.50
Amazon Merchant Price: $9.60
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| Customer Review: |
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1: In the minority here
I know everyone loved this book. The New York Times Book Review named it one of the 10 best books of 2007. I just don't get it. There are chapters on frugality and outhouse pranks and nut gathering. Cold winters and back-breaking chores abound, but none of it held my interest. Despite the slimness of the volume, I struggled to finish. This memoir reads like an disjointed collection of encyclopedia entries pertaining to country life rather than a living, breathing experience.
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2: LOVE this book!
This book was so comforting to read. I'd fix a cupof tea, grab the book and go hide in a quiet room to read. With all the hardships she faced on the farm, I still am envious. What a wonderful way to remember your childhood. I'd recommend this to anyone!
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3: Enjoyed every word.
To me this well written book was so enjoyable from beginning to the end; it is the way it was and I almost found myself envying this family. It took me back to basics and a time I remembered so well and identified with their way of life.
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4: Some good moments marred by poor writing and suffocating nostalgia
This book was a disappointment. There were some good moments but overall the whole thing felt very thin-- strangely lacking in analysis and perspective. Nearly every chapter ends with a rhetorical question whose only purpose is to demonstrate how wonderful things were "back then." For example the chapter about gardening ends this way "Do you need to be told, that with the addition of a marrow bone, Mama produced a magnificent soup. ..? Need I add that I adopted this final gathering routine right down to making a great soup in my own gardening days?" Unfortunately, by this point in the book, Kalish certainly doesn't need to tell us these things. This rhetorical strategy was exceedingly annoying throughout.
Yes, Kalish succeeds in describing how hard everyone worked back then, and that there were advantages to living so close to the natural world (her penultimate chapter on the family pets is one of the best). But too much of the book takes on the tone of a cranky old relative spinning out only half-believable stories in a scolding tone. She often asks the reader "Can you imagine children of today doing such a task?" Of course the only possible answer Kalish can imagine is No.
There are no other real characters in this book other than Kalish herself. Early on she writes about a charming maiden aunt named Belle, but other than Belle nobody else comes to life. Her brothers and sisters, even her mother are strangely flat--we are given no sense of them at all. Skip this one, and go rent a few episodes of the Waltons instead. You'll get more character development, better writing, and fewer lectures.
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5: the power of time and place
My wife read all nine volumes of the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (b. 1867) to our children, but if that's a stretch for your busy schedule, then Mildred Kalish's (b. 1922) best seller is a fine substitute. Kalish does for the Depression years what Wilder did for the American frontier, which is to give a nostalgic but realistic first person account of a place and time that is now lost to most people. Except for her epilogue, Kalish recounts her early childhood years on her grandparents' 240-acre farm in rural Iowa. As you would expect, her people epitomized the thrift, self-reliance, industry and independence of a family for whom "land was plentiful but money was almost non-existent." Individual chapters describe farm life, daily chores, a typical Thanksgiving that took two weeks to prepare, church life, wash day, the farm windmill, the outhouse, food (complete with many recipes), and more. As a young girl Kalish could skin a rabbit, butcher a live chicken, and fry a snapping turtle. But there were limits. She was not allowed to see her uncle wield a sledge hammer to slay a hog or use the butcher knife to severe its head.
Kalish acknowledges that not all people loved those years like she does even today. Her sister Avis refuses to talk about it at all. Nor does she gloss over negative aspects of her upbringing. She lived with her mother's parents because when she was about five her father was banished forever from the family and community for some unspoken misdeed, and his name was, quite literally, never mentioned again in her presence. She doesn't even know when he died. Her people were stern and emotionally reserved. They could be proud and moralistic. Any and all talk about sex education was strictly forbidden. Still, Kalish describes her upbringing as a "gift" for which she remains grateful, and in her telling it's easy to see why. A dozen or so original photos enhance the reading. The New York Times named this memoir one of the "Ten Best Books of 2007."
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