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Customer Rating:
Summary: enjoyable
Comment: a great read, sort of like an updated Little House for the adult reader. Details about farm life
including recipes & the like, but full of antics and stories of family life as well. overall, the
author seems too disgruntled with her upbringing and almost makes that the overtone of the book. a
fun book though.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent memoir
Comment: Little Heathens by Millie Kalish is a wonderful book about the author's life on an Iowa farm in the
1930's. She makes the setting and times come alive and I especially enjoyed getting a glimpse of my
parent's generation and what their childhood might have been like.

The values she was
taught as a child enabled her to become a member of the armed forces, go to college and become a
college professor. Her family offered love and support to its members in times that were very
challenging. This proves that it doesn't take a lot of money to become a succesful member of
society as an adult.

Some of the remedys for first aid I remember hearing from my
parents and their siblings.

It is truly worth your time to buy and read.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding, and a reminder of what 'builds character'!
Comment: My wife borrowed a copy of Little Heathens from our daughter, read it, and said I might like to read
it. I did, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's very well-written, humorous, heart-warming, and. . .a
reminder of how life can be lived, and enjoyed, even in very difficult times. I'm sure it will be
especially interesting to those who, like me, grew up in the Depression.

Customer Rating:
Summary: A clear-eyed and unsentimental look at the past
Comment: It would be a mistake to read this book through the lens of nostalgia. Certainly the childhood
Kalish describes is very appealing, particularly her commentaries on how her family fostered thrift
and independence. It's always tempting to think that the past is somehow a better place. However few
of us, I suspect, would wish to return to a time when a failed marriage could mark a woman for life
(and Kalish is clear about the effect of this on her mother) or when one measure of a woman's worth
was the degree of shine on her windowpanes (and Kalish is clear about her disdain for that
particular preoccupation). It's also important to remember that this memoir is just one view of the
Depression years; Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), which is based on his firsthand
observations of California migrants, tells a very different story. I'm a teacher, and I read this
book with a group of high school seniors, for whom the book was a revelation, particularly in its
descriptions of how little Kalish's family relied on purchased goods and how much she and her
siblings relied on imagination, not expensive sports equipment, in creating their own fun. For them
(and for me) the book is interesting not because it evokes a better time and place but because it
suggests that life on a Depression-era Iowa farm might teach us a few things relevant to our present
circumstances, economic ones included.

Customer Rating:
Summary: A Keeper!!!
Comment: I read aloud so many parts of this great book to my husband that he just had to read the whole thing
for himself - brought back many, many memories - funny how hard times can be remembered so
favorably! We highly recommend anyone reading "Little Heathens" who grew up on a farm, in the
country or in a small town, or wish they had. Kudos to the author!!