Harris and Me: A Summer Remembered

Paulsen, Gary. Harris and Me: A Summer Remembered. Harcourt, 1993. ISBN-10:0-15-2928774


Plot Summary
The boy's parents are drunks so he is often sent to live with different relatives. The summer that he is eleven, he is sent to live on a farm with the Larsons. Harris sets about treating the boy as a partner in crime. They "battle the commie japs" who are played by unsuspecting sows. The pigs are not too happy when two boys come flying into their pen. They have cob fights in the corn field and create elaborate adventures involving farm machinery, the draft horses and Roy Rogers. While the story is mostly episodic, chronicling the wild imaginations of two boys in summer, there is an underlying story about the boy's acceptance into the Larson family. The difference between Harris and his cousin is not just that one is from the city and the other from the country. One of the boys is without a permanent home and Harris is from a family that works together and loves each other.

Critical evaluation
Overall a laugh-out-loud, feel good story told entirely in first person. I really liked the way that the boys know they are doing something dangerous, rationalize it, then acknowledge that they are rationalizing it, and do it anyway. The boys are realistic and loveable.

Readers Annotations
Harris and me had quite a summer together. Most everything was Harris' idea. It was his fault that the horses were scared of us by the end of the summer and it was his fault that I was kicked in the head by Vivian, but I got back at him. And boy was he sore.

Information About the Author
Gary Paulsen is the author of more than 175 books for children and young adults, including the Newberry Honor books Hatchet and The Winter Room. He has led an adventurous life, racing the Iditarod twice and living by himself in a cabin in Minnesota. He is now married and continues to write.

Genre
Realistic fiction

Curriculum Ties
None.

Booktalking Ideas
1st person from the narrator. Tell the story of jumping on the horses.

Reading Level/Interest Age
Grade 4-7


Controversial Subject Matter and Defense of Ideas
none

Why Book Included
 Paulsen is a favorite author of mine.