Penrod: Amazon.ca: Booth Tarkington, Gordon Grant: Books

Product Description

Book Description

Penrod's escapades have delighted generations of readers. The stories in this Indiana classic will captivate still another generation of young readers and awaken nostalgia in many an adult.

About the Author

Jonathan Yardley is the book critic of and a columnist for the Washington Post. His books include biographies of Ring Lardner and Frederick Exley. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism in 1981.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Inside This Book (Learn More)

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

4.3 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Little Rascals, Aug 10 2010

By

Dave_42 "Dave_42" (Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Penrod (Hardcover)

The credit for the "Our Gang" (a.k.a. "Little Rascals" isn't given to Booth Tarkington's "Penrod", but one has to wonder if it should be. The movies started in 1922, while "Penrod" was published just 8 years earlier in 1914. There is a collection of characters in "Penrod" which is somewhat similar as well, and the comparison works much better for me than attempts to compare "Penrod" with "Huckleberry Finn", Wodehouse's school stories, or even "Tom Brown's Education". "Penrod" is categorized as a novel, but it really is a series of short sketches put together, with no plot carrying through the entire book. The sketches are very humorous, and this is definitely another case where Tarkington has grown as a writer to produce something unlike anything he wrote before.

Unfortunately, time has not been kind to this book. The stories are still funny, but the language will be an issue for many readers. It is important to read this book with an understanding of the time in which it was written, and sadly, the young readers who might enjoy this the most are also those who will have the greatest difficulty in understanding how the language was appropriate for its time, but is completely inappropriate now. Those who are mature enough to deal with this language issue will still enjoy reading these stories, but it is a shame that it can't be appreciated as it was when it was written.

As I indicated before, this book should not be compared with Twain or Wodehouse. Tarkington was nowhere near the writer that Twain was, and these stories lack the substance that can be found in Twain's work. Wodehouse's school stories are not as comedic as his later work, and the students in them are older than the characters that Tarkington creates in "Penrod", which makes those stories completely different than what Tarkington has created. These stories can still be appreciated for what they are, though, and even if one winces at the words now and then, they are very enjoyable.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Penrod....., Jun 19 2002

By

Amelia (mass. usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Penrod (Paperback)

Penrod Schofield is a very bad little boy. Well it is not even that he is a bad child it is just that he gets blamed for every thing that happens; for instance when his sisters dress disappears and ends up in dukes dog house and Penrod got blamed for it even though duke took it. He enjoys writing, and playing with his dog Duke who is almost always with him. Penrod thinks of himself as the class clown and tends not to be very truthful. Penrod has an unimportant role in the school production of The Round Table, but do not tell him that because he thinks if he dose not go the show will not go on with out him. Through out the book Penrod grows up a lot in my opinion for example he tell his father the truth at the end of the book which I did not think would happen. He does get in a lot of trouble whether it's eating too much candy or squealing on his sister.

I did not like Penrod because it was in my opinion aimed more for boys and not as much towards girls or maybe it was just me but I was not entertained through out the whole book. There were most definitely parts I liked for example parts were Penrod is in conversation; one part I did not like was the excerpts from Penrod's book about how Mr. Wilson is killed. I liked the conversational parts because through out the book you are kind of in Penrod's head, and I did not like that. But in conversation you sort of get both views from both people not just what Penrod thinks. Don't lie because no one will believe you even if you are right, that is the moral of this story. I hope my review helped.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic Realistic Tale, Mar 27 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Penrod (Paperback)

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.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars 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. Read more

Published on Mar 26 2002 by J. Reynolds

5.0 out of 5 stars a boy's life
I first read this book some time in the 1920s. Rereading it is a delight in contrast to some of the junk foisted off on us by modern corporate publishers as... Read more

Published on Mar 9 2002 by Charles L. Fontenay