Product Description

Penrod Schofield is an eleven-year-old boy living in middle America. He's been roped into the school play as the young Sir Lancelot, a role that he does not want to play. Instead of slogging through it, he and his friends make mischief and thus are dubbed the "bad boys." They lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. When Penrod's sister's dress is found muddied in the doghouse, he naturally is blamed for it. Penrod comes into situations that are too complicated for his young mind to understand, and yet, he manages to somehow make sense of it all. He learns, despite himself, what it means to be human.

Booth Tarkington's novels The Two Vanrevels and Mary's Neck appeared on the bestseller list nine times, making him one of the most popular writers of his time. Today, he is known for writing The Magnificent Ambersons (which won him the Pulitzer Prize), a piece of work that Orson Welles made into a film. Booth also won another Pulitzer for writing Alice Adams, a novel has been compared favorably to Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1557293 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
Booth Tarkington (1869–1946), born in Indianapolis, is best known for the Pulitzer Prize– winning novel The Magnificent Ambersons.

Jonathan Yardley is a book critic and columnist for the Washington Post. He has written six books and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism.

Customer Reviews

Being a boy!
"Penrod" is the humorous story of a twelve-year-old boy, Penrod Schofield, growing up in pre-World War I mid-west. He, with his dog Duke and his friends Sam Williams and the black brothers Herman and Vernon, are constantly getting into scrapes with adults. This is a celebration of the joys of boyhood. But, one wonders what counselors and behavioral psychologists and certain physicians would do today if Penrod Schofield got into their clutches! They might even put him on medication. For just being a boy!!....."They were upon their great theme: 'When I get to be a man!' Being human, though boys, they consider their present estate too commonplace to be dwelt upon. So, when the old men gather, they say: "When I was a boy!" It really is the land of nowadays that we never discover."

A Magnificent Novel That Will Fade From History
"Penrod" is a great novel -- interesting, enlightening, profound, grandiloquent and one of the most hilarious books ever written.

Aspects of the subject matter, however, while generally accepted in the early 1900s and treated kindly herein by the author, would simply not fly under today's political-correctness coercion. As far as popular literature is concerned, it is effectively a banned book. Consequently, "Penrod" eventually will fade from general literary consciousness, and linger only in the memories of those who truly appreciate a fine novel.

A Classic Realistic Tale
The Penrod series of novels is one of the most effective evocations of the experience of being a child ever written. They deal with the daily life and trials of a boy of eleven and twelve in turn of the century (1900) Indiana. The humor is found in the petty hypocrisies of the adults and the naivete of the children and how those two things intertwine. If you have ever day-dreamed in school or yearned for the favor of the prettiest girl in your class, you will appreciate these stories. NB. They are period pieces of the purest kind, so you should expect terms and attitudes to reflect the age from which they come.