Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Yesterday I FINALLY finished The Old Tobacco Shop:  A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure, and I’m calling that a hard win.  For one thing, the end-of-the-school-year events this year have been ridiculous–we’ve had more than ever before.  For another, what with the water heater and other things, I’ve been more than usually busy/tired at night, meaning that by the time I opened it up, I managed 3 or 4 pages before I fell asleep.  Victory, however, is finally mine!

Can you tell this one’s made me a little punchy?

So.  The Old Tobacco Shop was a runner-up to the Newbery medalist in 1922–the very first year of the Newbery Medal.  (Newbery Honor awards came along later and were rewarded to previous runners-up retroactively).  It hasn’t aged as well as some–the relating of Freddie’s initial meeting with Toby and Aunt Amanda creeped me out a bit as a parent, not to mention the scene with the adult urging the child (young enough to be getting over a lisp) to smoke a pipe that he said he didn’t want to smoke–but it’s still rather an entertaining adventure story.  It’s got a Narnia/Oz quality, or perhaps a bit of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”–a group of travelers thrown together on a fantastical adventure, which *spoiler alert* may or may not have been real.  There are random imps (as in, actual ill-intentioned supernatural creatures) at the beginning, pirates (and a piratical research society) in the middle, and an Old Man of the Mountain towards the end.  The writing style is typical for its time, which didn’t bother me; I read plenty of older books as a child.  (It moved along at a pretty good clip for a book published in 1921.)  All in all, if you’ve got a child who enjoys the Oz books, say, and you can get past the tobacco element, it might be a fun read for said child.  Otherwise, this is probably more of a book for people like me, with Newbery aspirations.