Free Book Review: ‘Penrod' by Booth Tarkington

Penrod tests home-made Smallpox medicine on a rival.

Free Book Review highlights public domain books you'd actually pay for if you had to.

Penrod, published in 1914, initiates readers in the secrets of the worst boy in town. (Population: 135,000.) The 11-year-old hero is more than a caricature ala Dennis the Menace, though. He's a compressed storm of human emotions — pride, jealousy, love and humiliation — familiar to adults but fresh to children. Never has an author written about young boys with greater insight and empathy.

Before putting this book on your kids' holiday reading list, however, read it yourself. Much has changed over the past century, and here's an abridged list of sit-down discussion topics Penrod might prompt:

—Racism
—Cruelty to animals
—Prescription drug abuse
—Slander
—Alcoholism
—Bullying

To his credit, Tarkington stands firmly in Penrod's corner throughout his misadventures and reveals his motives. Set in a time when corporal punishment governed American children, few of Penrod's adventures end without a lashing, but Tarkington questions the justice and efficacy of the rod.

This is a boy's lot: anything he does, anything whatever, may afterward turn out to have been a crime — he never knows.

Penrod's dense prose proves a minimalist style isn't always better. Tarkington builds the book with scholarly phrases and euphemisms, telling each story the way Penrod could if he had the words. Absurd situations like a tar-fight in the street are conveyed with straight-faced gravity, reminding the reader the power of emotions as felt by an 11-year-old boy.

The brevity of each story offsets the sophisticated style, though, and I had no trouble finishing the book. Rather than bend Penrod's tale to an adult's attention span, Tarkington instead stitched together a series of semi-related short stories to form a pleasing whole. The format suits the main character, whose life itself is a string of fits and phases. Penrod bounces back from the consequences of his exploits, no matter how spirit shattering or publicly humiliating. The author explains this remarkable resilience:

With a boy, trouble must be of Homeric dimensions to last overnight. To him, every next day is really a new day.

Though there's no overarching plot, the somewhat sudden ending is powerful enough to satisfy the reader.

Penrod reminds us that emotion is universal, love can be new and the best stories come from a bold life. Though nearly a century has passed since Penrod's glorious 12th birthday, there are still some lessons you can only learn from the worst boy in town.

Penrod is freely available for download in multiple formats from Manybooks.net and Gutenberg.org. An audiobook of questionable quality is available from Librivox.org.

The Introduction of Kent Kingdom.

 Congratulations! You've found your way into our musings that we shall share with you. I've never written on a blog before, and honestly I've avoided writing things that remind me of high school papers/essays so I don't have to be embarrassed. Steve is majoring in smarty-pants writing, however, so I think as his wife I must try to better my skills.

Steve picked the name for this blog. It reminds me of the hermit crab I had as a teenager. I don't remember his name, which is tragic, because I think that he would have wanted me to remember. He was a particularly introverted crab. I would only see him poke his head out of his shell if he was sure I wasn't looking (and by sure, I mean really sure). If he thought he was being watched, or perhaps stalked, he wouldn't come out again for what seemed hours. I would lay on my bed, pretending to be asleep, eyes closed with measured breathing, to lull him into the falsest sense of security. Only then could I behold his majesty. Unfortunately, his majesty didn't last for long. He died pretty quickly after I started playing mind games with him. I didn't know he was dead for a long time, a testament to his extreme shyness. I miss him, he was a good companion for someone like me.

We decided we are an introverted, people-disliking couple. That's not to say we are mean or actually hate anyone. We just happen to prefer each other to anyone else and we don't come across as "the couple to approach cause they seem so nice." That's just not our style. We likely come off rather abrasively, like a medium-grade sand paper, not the rough grit that grinds away obvious faults nor the fine tuning paper that brings out the smooth texture right before finish. Somewhere in between those extremes. We are friends with a more approachable couple and it works well for us. They bring the innocence to our rough personalities, making others more likely to approach us just by association. I'm grateful for opposites in this world, otherwise we'd all have to try too hard to be every personality type and end up not liking anyone.

P.S. I love the Crocodile Hunter. I am in no way trying to shame him, this is to honor him. His name is Steve and I married a Steve. I'm all about people named Steve.