Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression | 
 enlarge | Author: Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
Buy New: $6.79
You Save: $5.21 (43%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  88 reviews
Sales Rank: 1686
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0553384244
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.761033092
EAN: 9780553384246
ASIN: 0553384244
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081007210729T
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Product Description
I tell of a time, a place, and a way of life long gone. For many years I have had the urge to describe that treasure trove, lest it vanish forever. So, partly in response to the basic human instinct to share feelings and experiences, and partly for the sheer joy and excitement of it all, I report on my early life. It was quite a romp.
So begins Mildred Kalish’s story of growing up on her grandparents’ Iowa farm during the depths of the Great Depression. With her father banished from the household for mysterious transgressions, five-year-old Mildred and her family could easily have been overwhelmed by the challenge of simply trying to survive. This, however, is not a tale of suffering.
Kalish counts herself among the lucky of that era. She had caring grandparents who possessed—and valiantly tried to impose—all the pioneer virtues of their forebears, teachers who inspired and befriended her, and a barnyard full of animals ready to be tamed and loved. She and her siblings and their cousins from the farm across the way played as hard as they worked, running barefoot through the fields, as free and wild as they dared.
Filled with recipes and how-tos for everything from catching and skinning a rabbit to preparing homemade skin and hair beautifiers, apple cream pie, and the world’s best head cheese (start by scrubbing the head of the pig until it is pink and clean), Little Heathens portrays a world of hardship and hard work tempered by simple rewards. There was the unsurpassed flavor of tender new dandelion greens harvested as soon as the snow melted; the taste of crystal clear marble-sized balls of honey robbed from a bumblebee nest; the sweet smell from the body of a lamb sleeping on sun-warmed grass; and the magical quality of oat shocking under the light of a full harvest moon.
Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a “hearty-handshake Methodist” family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish’s memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like “quite a romp.”
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 83 more reviews...
 A Keeper!!! October 5, 2008
I read aloud so many parts of this great book to my husband that he just had to read the whole thing for himself - brought back many, many memories - funny how hard times can be remembered so favorably! We highly recommend anyone reading "Little Heathens" who grew up on a farm, in the country or in a small town, or wish they had. Kudos to the author!!
 Back in the day October 4, 2008
This is like listening to your grandma (or that old lady in the Titanic movie) telling in a gentle, slow-cadenced voice, about the "old days." Among the topics covered: thrift, medicine, chores, farm food, gathering food, and wash day. The book starts off mildly entertaining, but just like grandma (or grandpa), it gets long-winded. You start to feel bored and restless and wonder how much more you can sit through before you make the move for your coat. You might decide that the next time she repeats, "waste not, want not," you'll excuse yourself and head for the door. But if you stick with this book through the dragging middle, you get to the best parts, the chapters called "animal tales," "racoons and other critters," and "me." She tells how the kids in the family tamed racoons (the racoons slept in bed with them!) The middle part drags in part because of obsolete practices that she describes. It's hard to picture what she's talking about when she tells of the oat shocking procedure, the mechanics of their laundry routine, and the windmill. Parts of these sections read like how-to manuals, including how to propare various meals. Her chapter called "me" is the best, as it has the most human interest, telling a little bit about how she went to college, joined the coast guard, got married, etc. What is ridiculous is that she puts this chapter as an epilogue! Like she's so modest, she can't have a place in the book, it has to be tagged at the end? Like, here's a tiny bit about little ol' me if you care to know...Yeah, thanks, that's why I picked up this book in the first place!
 Interesting and fun September 7, 2008
Certainly not an earth shaking book, but interesting and fun. After I read it for a book club, I bought this copy for my mother, who is the same generation and spent a great deal of time being raised by her older sister and brother in law on their farm in Illinois. She loved it.
Things didn't change much im 20 yeras August 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I grew up on a farm in southern Idaho, homesteaded by my grandparents in 1903, The stories are very@simular to the way@we lived, but with the addition of electrcity, I think I shall write a book. But most of all I am reading it om m y Kindle| Marilyn Dakan. Ruidoso, NM
A WONDERFUL SURPRISING AND INTERESTING BOOK August 26, 2008
I am sooooo glad that this book was mentioned to me. My husband loves it as he learned a good trick: he wears expensive leather work gloves, the right hand ALWAYS wore out first, he had 9 left handed gloves laying around. The book told the story of a family that 'made do' with what they had during hard times. Turn the left hand glove inside out and you have a right hander. So many little things that this family did, I can still turn a shirt collar like my gramma taught me. A great and fine story during the Great Depression of an Iowa farm family with several children. I can remember polishing my little Patent leather shoes with Vaseline etc. I can see myself reading this again later on. It is a joy to read.
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