The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked - Softcover

Benjamin, David

3.38

139 ratings by Goodreads

9780812966589: The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812966589 ISBN 13: 9780812966589

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003

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A “Best Book of the Year” finalist of the Great Lakes Booksellers Association, here is a laugh-out-loud retelling of an American childhood.

Through the telling of his own madcap childhood, David Benjamin pays homage to the exuberance of countless young boys growing up in Middle America in the 1950s. Whether he’s stalking frogs through the bogs of Tomah, Wisconsin, playing four-kid baseball with his bothersome little brother and two favorite cousins, or sneaking into the theater to watch Saturday-afternoon Westerns, Benjamin is the kind of little kid who would have fallen in eagerly with the redoubtable Tom Sawyer.

Traversing the nooks and crannies of kidhood, from ballfields to swimming holes, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked captures a time and a place in twentieth-century American life and celebrates the adventures and wanderlust that once made childhood such an exhilarating enterprise.

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From the Back Cover:

“Richly hilarious...[Benjamin] retains a little boy’s flair for spinning epics from anecdotes, and he applies to it an adult’s taste for irony. Don’t read this at bedtime—your laughter might wake up the kids.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“[Benjamin’s] memories of dodging summer catechism class, sitting by the local fishing spot with a bamboo pole and fending off attacking squirrels, turtles and leeches will appeal to all those of us who rue the manifold complications of 21st-century life....Benjamin makes a charming and delightful anthropologist.”
—The Washington Post

“[Benjamin] recalls, both wistfully and comically, a time when moms kicked kids out of the house in the morning and welcomed them back only to feed them and put them to bed, when the lives of adults and kids did not intersect unless the latter came home bleeding.”—The Denver Post

“This book is loaded with hilarious vignettes, and Benjamin deftly evokes both the bewilderment and savvy of kids trying to get a handle on life....Pungent with vivid writing...full of wonderfully written set pieces.” —The Hartford Courant

About the Author:

David Benjamin was born in Sparta, Wisconsin, in 1949 and lived in nearby Tomah until he was thirteen. He began his first novel, The Adventures of Stanley and Peggy, the Sniderman Twins, in the fourth grade. It remains unfinished. A contributor to the Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Wisconsin State Journal, Benjamin is also the author of The Joy of Sumo: A Fan’s Notes. He now lives with his wife in San Francisco and Paris.
From the Hardcover edition.

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