A hilarious, episodic book about a boy whose family moves from town to way out in the country after his father comes home from World War II. Donald doesn't want to leave town, and resolves almost immediately to save his money so he can run away to Hollywood, as soon as he can manage to save up nine dollars.
The book is told in first person, but unlike most YA books, it doesn't feel like a child is telling the tale. It feels like an adult telling the tale of his growing up. It is absolutely on the same plane with the popular movie, "A Christmas Story." It is told so much in that vein that I often could hear the narrator of that film talking in my head as I read. It is filled with dry humor and lines like these: "Mother did not approve of our climbing to the top of the big tree. In fact, she was generally opposed to any kind of fun that put our lives at risk."
I frequently found myself both laughing out loud, and pausing to read a passage out loud. This is a book that begs to be read aloud. ( )

This was a very memorable story. The narrator and his little brother have been living with the mother only and getting along well in their apartment until the sergeant, their father comes back from the WWII and moves the family to a farm. This is light and comical told in the first person. Adults would enjoy this just as much as the children. This would be a great read-aloud. ( )

What happens at your house when your on vacation. In this book the dolls party. The main character decides to runway into the big outdoors to save her little sister from being returned to the doll maker. (a little complicated here) She and her friends end up in a department story and have to figure out how to get out and home. Wheww! ( )

In 1946 when his father returns from the war, a ten year old boy and his family move from the Montana town where they had been living to an old, run-down farm in the middle of nowhere, where they work hard trying to make ends meet.
WARNING: There is some monir swearing--damn, crap, etc.-- throughout the book. ( )

I first met this book years ago in the form of a series of short stories in /The School Magazine/ with the overall title, 'Scenes from a Canadian Childhood'. Now, in hard covers and with an overall narrative arc, they're still a joy: two boys come to terms with their father's return from killing Nazis and almost immediately uprooting them and their mother from their suburban lives to take on the life of a struggling farmer. For the book, someone has decided to transplant the farm from rural Canada to US-book-buyer-friendly Montana, but other than that the stories are as fresh, their ironic comedy as laugh-out-loud as ever. ( )