147. Homer Price

Homer Price by Robert McCloskey

Pages: 160
Finished: Aug. 29, 2008
First Published: 1943
Genre: children, realistic fiction
Rating: 3.5/5

Reason for Reading: Read aloud to the 8yo. Decades Challenge

First sentence:

About two miles outside of Centerburg, where route 56 meets route 56A, there lives a boy named Homer.

Comments: This is an episodic children's book, typical of the time period in which it was written. There is no plot running through the story but instead each chapter (there are 6) describes an adventure of Homer's. Homer's life in the 1940s is one of freedom and childhood naivete. His escapades border on the outlandish and that makes them all that much more fun, but a little less believable. I've read this book three times now and I never get tired of it. I love the episode where the suburb is built with identical houses and no one can find their own homes and the 8yo loved the doughnut maker goes out of control episode. The 8yo thoroughly enjoyed this book and I think he's going to be a fan of other books in this same genre. He already loves Henry Huggins, and I have yet to introduce him to The Great Brain, Soup and Henry Reed. This book is similar to the others I mentioned and will be enjoyed by those who enjoy these stories of old-fashioned boyhood. While I really enjoy this book I think it just misses the mark to being great instead of good.