THE TOOTH AND MY FATHER

by William Saroyan ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1974

Of the two wispy, affectionate memoirs included here the first at least is strictly for children who will go along with fanciful nonsense without asking why, how or wha- -. The youthful narrator of ""The Tooth,"" which is scarcely a story at all but more like a whimsical chat, is less concerned with the events -- his tooth comes loose and later falls out, to be replaced under his pillow by a nickel and four pennies instead of a dime -- than with his interpretation thereof: ""That night long ago when I went to sleep the tooth became my real self and the other self became a nickel and four pennies. It was as simple as that."" In ""My Father"" the same neatly knee-socked, sailor-suited little boy watches with his baby sister as his widowed father fires their overbearing nurse for criticizing his singing of ""Polly Wolly Doodle,"" then takes the children for a ride on his back around ""our liberated house."" Verrier's mostly blue and yellow crayoned-in drawings, her little boy all blue eyed and earnest and clearly not contemporary, her nurse changing from a uniformed woman to a puffy bird to an armored Valkyrie, maintain the required proportion of Saturday Evening Post nostalgia and tongue-in-cheek fantasy.

Pub Date: May 1, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1974

Categories: CHILDREN'S