Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54171 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780152058807
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Paulsen choreographs an antic jig of down-on-the-farm frolics in this warm comedy set a few years after WW II. The 11-year-old narrator (who has spent a good portion of his life being shipped off to various relatives) has never seen anything like the Larson homestead, where he is sent to spend the summer; nor has he witnessed anyone like second cousin Harris, prankster extraordinaire. Initiation to country life includes a swift kick in the head by Vivian the cow, run-ins with an angry rooster and the Larson's spirited pet lynx, as well as assorted dares and humiliations conducted by nine-year-old Harris, who eventually becomes a cherished friend. Days are filled with a mixture of tough work and rough play and sometime during the course of his visit the city boy--parented by a couple of "puke drunks"--learns the real meaning of "home." On the Larson farm, readers will experience hearts as large as farmers' appetites, humor as broad as the country landscape and adventures as wild as boyhood imaginations. All this adds up to a hearty helping of old-fashioned, rip-roaring entertainment. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 6-9-A nostalgic journey through a boy's breakneck summer. Told by a narrator recalling his experiences the summer he was 11, the stories begin with his being dropped by a deputy at the farm home of a distant relative. "'We heard your folks was puke drunks, is that right?'" asks the beguiling and reckless nine-year-old Harris almost immediately. Of course they are, but that dismal fact of life is forgotten nearly at once as Harris leads the two of them off on one wild adventure after another. As one might suspect from Paulsen, there are no ordinary characters residing on this backwoods farm: there's Vivian, the ornery, kicking cow; 300 pound pigs who don't look kindly on wrestling matches with boys; Ernie, the attack-rooster; Louie, the hired hand with strange table manners and an artistic streak; Buzzer, his pet lynx; and Harris's older sister, Glennis, who is constantly whacking him for swearing. (At times the language does get a little salty.) The plot is a loosely constructed romp with each chapter an episode that's fast paced, highly descriptive, and funny. Using headings such as "In which war is declared and honor established," Paulsen raises readers' expectations and sets the tone for the action to follow. Some stories push beyond believability and edge into tall-tale territory, but it doesn't matter, for this is storytelling in the tradition of Twain and Harte, memorable and humorous and very telling of human nature.
Lee Bock, Brown County Public Libraries, Green Bay, WI
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 6 and up. Although Paulsen is perhaps best known for his dramatic adventure stories, he has also, over the years, given us glimpses of wonderful comedy--in his depiction of the tobacco-spitting plumber in The Island (1988), in the self-deprecating humor and farce found in the Iditarod experiences he wrote about in Woodsong (1990), and in the wacky, not entirely successful comic novel The Boy Who Owned the School (1990). With this book, a picaresque tale of sorts, he turns the tables once and for all to prove himself a top-notch humorist--as adept at capturing character eccentricities as he is at building momentum toward riotous climax. There's none of Paulsen's familiar clipped prose in this novel. The story, a first-person retrospect, is a graceful, smoothly written series of episodes that begin as the 11-year-old narrator finds himself dumped on yet another distant relative's doorstep, home being an "impossibility" because of his parents' drinking. This time it's the farm of the Larsons--Uncle Knute, Aunt Clair, and their two children, Glennis and Harris--where he's to spend the summer. And what a summer it is, filled with back-breaking work, the like of which he's never imagined, and with the equally unexpected antics of the extraordinary nine-year-old Harris. Totally irrepressible, curious, and clever, with a rude, colorful vocabulary that's constantly earning him whacks from his vigilant sister, Harris, bib overalls flapping, leads the initially unsuspecting narrator into what can only be called SERIOUS MISCHIEF.The Larsons' 1950s hardscrabble farm, insulated from much of the outside world, is a marvelous playground for the boys. It's there they spend their free time dodging testy Buzzer, hired man Louie's mammoth cat; fighting "red indians" and "commie japs"; terrorizing horses and wrestling pigs slippery with muck; and "furthering their educations"--by learning what happens when pee hits an electric fence and when a motor from the wringer washer is attached to a plain old bike.In a way, there's as much edge-of-the-chair suspense in this rowdy, slam-bang comedy as there is in Tracker (1984). We wait with bated breath to see what kind of adventure Harris will devise next--and how it will turn out. And, in fact, by the end of the story, so much has happened that we're ready for a rest. There's more to this book than funny stuff, though. But Paulsen never loses sight of his vulnerable narrator, a classic outsider never named, who finds by the end of his summer a place he finally belongs and people who love him: "I unwrapped a piece of paper in the box and found the small figure that had been me in Louie's diorama . . . I put it on a windowsill where I could see it while I drifted to sleep that night and dreamed of horses and farms and corn and girls with blonde hair . . . and bicycles that did a hundred miles an hour, carrying a freckled boy in bibs. . . ." Truly one of Paulsen's best. Stephanie Zvirin

Customer Reviews

Not Your Typical Children's Writer
Gary Paulsen never shuns writing about real life to spare your kiddies' artificial innocence. His books deal with the pains and joys of childhood - parental quarrels, alcoholism, abusive behavior, etc. - more forthrightly than any other children's writer I encountered with my own son as he was learning to read, and my son loved Paulsen's book enough to choose them for himself.

"Harris and Me" is a first-person narrative, told by a boy whose dysfunctional family has sent him to live with kinfolk on a backcountry farm in Minnesota. Harris is the bigger boy whose family has the farm. He becomes the narrator's surrogate older brother and role model for devil-may-care enjoyment of boyish wildness. The narrator sense that his own nature is different from Harris's but he treasures Harris's spirit. It's a quick read for an adult, a kind of hyper-condensed adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. It's funny fun for the right kid to read silently or out loud, but children raised in a household devoted to propriety may find it incomprehensible, since propriety is not a virtue on Gary Paulsen's farm.

One might suspect that this narrative, like many of Paulsen's, is semi-autobiographical. I'm very certain, however, that Paulsen has somehow gotten ahold of my unwritten memoirs, and used MY childhood for his model. I've seldom read anything that depicts the experiences of farm life, in Minnesota or in Sweden, fifty years ago or today, as accurately as this short book. I mention Sweden because I lived as a boy on a diary farm near Nykoping that was identical to Harris's. Like Paulsen, I've traveled very far, physically and culturally, from that farm, but in my heart of hearts I'm still Harris, and/or his admiring sidekick, myself. For a writer like Paulsen, "home" is not so much a place but rather a time of life.

Paulsen's most popular books are imaginative adventure tales featuring intrepid boys. "The Hatchet" is his best seller. Shorter, more personal books like "Harris and Me" are, in my opinion, better choices for kids to read, offering flashes of insight into maturity, however challenging, instead of day-dream invulnerability.

Hilarious adventures in a time when kids played
Due to his parents' alcoholic tendencies and their inability to care properly for him, the unnamed narrator of this coming-of-age tale is forced to move from place to place throughout most of his childhood. We are told of one summer in early 1950s, which lands our eleven-year-old narrator with Harris and his family, the Larsens, who are "shirttail relatives" and have willingly taken him under their wing to live on their remote farm. The family consists of an "Aunt" Clair, "Uncle" Knute, fifteen-year-old Glennis, a sort of cousin, and her nine-year-old brother, Harris.

Although younger and smaller than the narrator, nine-year-old Harris is a wild, rambunctious, hilarious scoundrel, and he quickly initiates the narrator in the ways of rural life, whether the initiation is welcome or not. Each chapter in this book details a harebrained, yet inspired scheme that Harris concocts in order to make the farm a more interesting place to live. Each page is filled with colorful language, vividly drawn characters, and laugh-out-loud moments.

Perhaps in spite of the constant hilarity of each adventure the book resonates on a much deeper level as well, for the narrator, who has for his whole life been a rootless, wandering soul, with no one to care for him, finally finds a home in the most unlikely of places. The humor and heart-string-tugging emotion of this book will resonate long after the last page has been turned.

Highly recommended for readers nine and up!

FYI: Although the narrator remains unnamed in the book, this "novel" is rumored to be much more biographical than Gary Paulsen perhaps at time of publication wanted to be revealed. Therefore, as I teach this book to a class of 7th graders, I remind them that we can simply refer to "The Narrator" as "Gary."

A Fantastic Book
This book deserves at least 10 stars. I confess, it is my favorite book of all time. Read the entire first chapter and I guarantee that you won't be able to put it down. It is hilarious!

This autobiographical novel is about the summer Gary Paulsen spent at his cousin's farm. Harris is a real person! And so is Gary - so he didn't get to choose the ending to this story. Unfortunately, Gary's parents were mean drunks. But, somehow, he survived. And he has given us some of the best survival stories kids will ever read. So, if you're looking for a sequel, pick up one of his other books. Many are based on his life.

I had the honor of meeting Gary a few years ago at an author visit. He read aloud the chapter about his experience with the electric fence. We laughed so hard, tears were streaming down our faces. This story brings back some great memories of my childhood and the wild stunts my brothers pulled when we were growing up on our family farm.