Tales from a Free-Range Childhood

In his first new book in six years, Donald Davis, considered by many to be the father of family tales, returns to recollections of growing up in the southern Appalachians, and especially of his relationship with his sibling Joe.Davis has remarked that he "didn't learn stories, I just absorbed them" from a family of traditional storytellers that has lived on the same western North Carolina land since 1781. Among this collection of 18 chronologically arranged stories, Davis explains why 28 second-graders petitioned the school board to reestablish paddling as their preferred form of punishment, instead of the new policy of "suspension." He also spins family tales about how his mother was finally convinced to give his brother Joe's naturally curly, "wasted-on-a-boy" hair its first cut; how he and his cousin Andy got fired from their job of "watching the baby"; how his brother convinced their mother to adopt her first cats; and how he got a chemistry set designated for children...