Random recollections from the author's childhood in Steig's distinctive, funny style. ( )

I didn't realize at first that this was actually the author describing his boyhood. This book is a great way to show kids how things were done in the past. It's a bit disjointed and not your typical beginning-middle-end. It's was more like one-page vignettes. Each page is a different memory and that's my favorite thing about it. Simple words are used making it easy to understand. I also think the book is very informative on what life was like back then. The authors personal experiences make the book more relatable and fun to read. ( )

In my opinion, this was an average children's picture book. This book was about the author's childhood and some of the things he remembered most about it. The first thing that I noticed was the how the writing of the book was choppy. On some pages, the writing flowed and was easy for readers to follow. But on most pages, the writing jumped around to different topics that really didn't have anything to do with the previous topic. For example, on one page it says, "We moved a lot. The moving men were very strong." and on the very next page it suddenly moves to saying, "We used to go shopping with Mom all the time. We went along to carry stuff. This is Barney, our butcher." The next thing that I thought was interesting to this book was the point of view. The point of view is that of the author as a child. I liked this factor because it doesn't just come out and tell you in the beginning and tell you that the the story will be told by the author but rather has the reader figure it out while reading. The final part of the book that I thought was a little interesting was the illustrations. They were all drawn by the author himself and kind of resemble the drawings of how a child would draw. I liked them for that reason but some of the illustrations were just kind of weird and not appropriate for younger children. For example, on one of the pages where the author is talking about World War I, the illustrations depicts a dead horse and a man bleeding while being shot. I thought that was a little graphic for some children. ( )

This book would make a nice addition to an author study on William Steig, as well as a great introduction for children on what the world was once like. Steig's illustrations are more childlike than usual, and convey a sense of longing and nostalgia.

I didn’t like this picture book very much. One of the biggest reasons that I disliked this book was due to the ‘plot line’ if you can call it that. I felt like it was so random. Nothing in the book seemed to connect to one another. It felt like the author just threw together some pages, and that was the end of that. There wasn’t any true thought into how the book was organized, or how each thought would be connected.
Another reason I didn’t like this book was because there wasn’t enough color for me. I tend to rely on color to portray emotion, and I felt that this book was lacking in emotion. Most of the pages were black and white with a few dashes of color occasionally.
The main idea of this book is that William Steig lived in a very different world as a child, and everyone wore hats back then. ( )