Homer Price

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Summary: Weird or what?
Review: Centerburg. Homer Price. This is the place where the most Preposterous things seem to happen. The world that the kid, Homer Price lives in is a world of mystery and a world of humor. From giant ragweed to a continuous donut-making machine, from giant balls of yarn to Grandpa Hercules' stories, Homer Price seems to be at the middle of everything. These stories of Homer Price are interesting, humorous, and a bit mysterious. In any way, this is a real book for jokers and ideal for people that enjoys the comedy.

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Summary: Ths book is realy really good
Review: Hello i first red this book when i was 7 yeers old now i am 46 and a lawyer but i still smile wen i reed about the donut mashine!! i think it is a good book and i am sory mr. McCloskey died today. i wuold like to thank him for all the fun he gav me and i bet lots of other boys and girls too!!! i know God will tak care of him becaus he must of made so many kids happy wif his storys. this is a good book and i wuold recomend it to anyone who likes funny stories about reglar american kids.

Robert McCloskey really did pass away today (July 1, 2003), and I thought it would be appropriate to pay tribute to him and his wonderful work in words I might have used when I first read "Homer Price" in 1964. I'm not quite sure how things are set up in Heaven, but I'd LIKE to think that right about now Mr. McCloskey is having a cozy chat with L. Frank Baum, A.A. Milne, and all the other authors whose works have brought joy to the hearts of children down through the years. Sort of welcoming him to club, as it were.

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Summary: for all ages
Review: I don't think Centerburg Tales and Homer Price are only for young people, I enjoy them thoroughly and I am 33 years old now. Have read them several times. - Also great for reading aloud to young people / kids! SUCH fun!

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Summary: Very Good Book
Review: I first read this in elementary school, but years later I bought it again. The stories have funny twists with great imaginative properties, like the "Ever-so-much-more-so" powder which enhances everything on which it is sprinkled, or the giant ragweed plants which prompt someone to suggest air-conditioning the whole town.

Read it to someone, give it to someone. Should be part of every juvenile fiction library right along side Beverly Cleary, Encyclopedia Brown, and the like.

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Summary: Homer Price: A Really Good Book
Review: Robert McCloskey's Homer Price (1943) is a collection of six short stories about all-American boy Homer Price of Centerburg, U.S.A. Probably a product of McCloskey's own nostalgia for small town life, the book may remind readers of Elizabeth Enright's Thimble Summer (1939), in which young girl protagonist Garnet Linden discovers the adventures of every day life in the rural Midwest.

Homer Price is a quietly confident, unbefuddled, and laconic boy around whom a series of somewhat unusual events occur. In the most memorable episode, Homer tends his progress-seeking but work-shy uncle's lunch counter while its newfangled automatic donut machine, short a piece of its machinery, turns out thousands and thousands of donuts as crowds gather to watch. In other stories, Homer captures a team of robbers with the help of pet skunk Aroma, participates in the winding of what is thought to be the largest ball of string in existence, and helps the sheriff discover the identity of the mysterious stranger that has come to town.

Homer's hobby is building radios, which is significant, as the book's world is a pre-television landscape where simple pleasures such as getting a haircut at the local barber shop, pitching horseshoes, or reading the latest issue of Super-Duper comic book at the soda fountain are the highlights of the day, and the autumn county fair the highlight of the year. Throughout, McCloskey subtly weaves the idea of inevitable change, represented not only by the unstoppable donut machine, but by the 100-house suburb of identical, prefabricated houses (each has 'a print of Whistler's Mother over the fireplace') that sprouts up within a week on historical Centerburg land. But McCloskey honors the past while accepting the present and anticipating the future: there are as many mildly progressive citizens of Centerburg as there are mildly traditional ones.

All the pieces are charming, light, funny, and pleasant. While there are no heavy-handed messages, good manners, strength of character, and acceptance of eccentricity and difference are stressed. McCloskey also quietly and humorously comments on courting and marriage rituals, politics, and the role of boredom and gossip in small town life. Though the focus is on Homer, the book is in fact about all of the citizens of Centerburg, with Homer really only one of the crowd.

Adults will enjoy rediscovering Homer Price and sharing it with children, who may see some merit in Price's unhurried sense of wonder about life, the world, and the simple things around him.

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Summary: The donet mishing is going wakow, how can it be fixed.
Review: set in a time when having a shunk for a pet was OK, when fried chicken and doughnuts came with every meal and a small town was a safe place to live. Where magazines cost a dime, the sheriff was somebody you could trust and you could still burn leaves! A town of doughnut making machines, mouse traps that don't harm the mice and no lynchings.
For ages 9 and up, a great book for boys and girls. If they, or you, enjoyed it I would also suggest getting 'Centerburg Tales', which has more stories on Homer Price and the folks of Centerburg. Frankly, there is no way to give this book a bad review!

Rating:
Summary: An undiminished delight
Review: This book should be at the top of your purchase list for every child in the 7 to 10 age group. Homer is an all-American boy in the all-American small town of Centerburg, somewhere in the all-American midwest, and in six hilarious escapades he keeps the kids (and grownup readers, too) enthralled. The stories are funny, engaging and original, and the illustrations, by the author, are priceless. Everyone will have their favorite chapter in this book; my own favorite was "The Doughnuts"; decades after I first read it as a child, it's still as fresh and funny as it was way back when. I bought this book for my son when he was seven and he was in stitches from the first page to the last. "Homer" is one of the all-time champs.