Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mildred Armstrong KalishEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-29
ISBN: 0553384244
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
Book Review: Nostalgic tedium
Summary: 3 Stars
I was really expecting this to be interesting. As it is, I would have given it two stars, except that I feel it has value as a social history. This is the sort of thing that would be a treasure for a family, and belongs in Iowan history collections. I don't really understand why it was published, let alone so well received. My opinion of of the New York Times's literary taste was not enhanced.
This is occasionally interesting, but at times fragments into a mishmash of scattered reminisces, and was at times so boring that only the fact that I was reading it for a book club kept me going. I also found the author's smug self-satisfaction off-putting. Does the frugal upbringing of which she so frequently boasts explain why she drove a basic, economical car like a Cadillac? Armstrong never does deal with the disconnect between her happy memories of the past, and the fact that she ran from that life as fast as she could. I often wondered as I read this if she is very disappointed in her children and grandchildren, as she tells us about her uplifting childhood that is so different from "kids today". Perhaps that explains a nostalgia for a life she didn't care to live as an adult. Otherwise, I guess she is just a nostalgia bore, like so many people, wanting to see a golden age in the past that apparently wasn't all that pleasant at the time.
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Summary of Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp.So begins Mildred Kalish's story of growing up on her grandparents' Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive. This, however, is not a tale of suffering.
Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. She had caring grandparents who possessed-and valiantly tried to impose-all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared.
Filled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world's best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted; the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest; the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass; and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon.
Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a "hearty-handshake Methodist" family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish's memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like "quite a romp."
From the Hardcover edition.
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