Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression | 
|  | | | Title: | Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression | | Author: | Mildred Armstrong Kalish | | Publisher: | Bantam | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 29 April, 2008 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0553384244 / 9780553384246 | | List Price: | $12.00 | | You Save: | $2.40 | | Amazon Price: | $9.60 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
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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Customer Reviews:
• Love This Book! 05 August, 2008
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!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2U3AGS91PMBM1
• In The Minority Here 09 August, 2008
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.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2KIVODZRTGY4U
• Some Good Moments Marred By Poor Writing And Suffocating Nostalgia 31 July, 2008
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.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A13YJUIH5UBF83
• A Wonderful Surprising And Interesting Book 26 August, 2008
I am sooooo glad that this book was mentioned to me. My husband loves it as he learned a good trick: he wears expensive leather work gloves, the right hand ALWAYS wore out first, he had 9 left handed gloves laying around. The book told the story of a family that 'made do' with what they had during hard times. Turn the left hand glove inside out and you have a right hander. So many little things that this family did, I can still turn a shirt collar like my gramma taught me. A great and fine story during the Great Depression of an Iowa farm family with several children. I can remember polishing my little Patent leather shoes with Vaseline etc. I can see myself reading this again later on. It is a joy to read.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2ZKLX6FVTXAJD
• Enjoyed Every Word. 04 August, 2008
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.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3BDKJ3WI854UB
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