SWEETIE FEETIE: A True Story

Hard to believe, but the 74-year-old author tells us here that he didn't get his name, Harold Kenneth, until he picked the first one himself at the end of second grade. Seems a fellow named Harold broke up a fight he was getting the worst of, and when he told Mom that was the name he wanted, she said, ""O.K. We'll give you Kenneth to go with it."" Up until then he was called Sweetie Feetie, which didn't bother him any 'til he started school and the teacher gave him a hard time over it. Jones' memories of a rural Illinois childhood are set down unpretentiously in script and illustrated with homey cartoon-primitive crayon drawings (sometimes resembling unmodulated Robert Andrew Parker) that suit the vernacular telling.