****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I found this book somewhat by chance in my local library. It looked interesting...sort of like a modern version of Tom Sawyer, and that's exactly what it was. Boys in particular will love these books, because they chronicle the life of boys as it really exists - dirt, worms, clubhouses, alternately loving/hating girls, playing pranks, and just generally getting into and out of various and sundry mischief."Soup" is essentially an autobiographical account of author Robert Newton Peck's experiences growing up in rural Vermont in the 1920s. While he has no doubt greatly embellished these accounts to make them larger than life in these books, they are enormously fun and charming nonetheless. The young Peck (Rob in the stories) recounts life with his best pal "Soup", so named because he is embarrassed by his real name (Luther) and only comes running when his mother makes the dinner call of "Soup's On!" Hence, his nickname Soup became a permanent ID and also the namesake for this wonderful series of books. Soup is the mischievious ringleader in most of the misadventures, with Rob the younger and more naive sidekick.My son loved these stories as I read them aloud to him. For road trips, we would find some books from the "Soup" series on tape and listen to those, and they invariably made the miles go faster.As a parent, I loved the stories not only because they are hysterically funny, but because they are nostalgic and take me back to my own childhood when the pace of life was slower, things were simpler, and children were somehow less worldly wise, without the craving for 24/7 electronic stimulation. Sigh.Peck imparts a wholesomeness to us in these books and my child never complained that the stories were sappy or lame. We both loved the recurring characters from book to book, such as the boys' teacher, and the portly Miss Bolund, the school nurse who shows up in her tiny, highly unreliable car at regular intervals. There's also the school bully - who happens to be a girl - and can whump just about any boy in the county.Very occassionally (as in once or twice) there is content that some parents may find slightly objectionable - such as the boys experimenting with smoking or swearing. However, as a christian parent I never found any of these things problematic because the context was always quite clear that what the boys were doing was wrong and the book never comes across as condoning such behavior. It's more like the stories we've heard of kids who try smoking, only to end up turning green and vowing never to touch the foul things again. So, think in terms of Mark Twain...not something that tries to be "hip" by being PG-13, or going to the other extreme and bending over backwards to be politically correct and preachy.In summary, I whole-heartedly recommend these books. There are a dozen or more in the series. They build on a fine tradition first given to us by Mark Twain in "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn," portraying boyhood the way it was and forever should be.
