Farm On Nippersink Creek (American Storytelling) [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Jim May (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 1995

Likened by critics to Garrison Keillor only more deliberate and elegiac Jim May writes the stories of his youth, growing up in the rural Midwest between the Truman and the JFK eras, where trading stories was as common as trading horses, and frequently required the same skills. Neighboring, as his mother called it, was part of the social fabric. These 18 poignant and humorous stories of life's joys and trials told with the freshness of youth, yet tempered with the wisdom of age evoke a simpler time in our nation's history without romanticizing its inherent hardships.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

These sensual, slow-moving stories, as placid as the small-town life they chronicle, are surprisingly satisfying, though nothing of any real interest ever seems to happen, and the narrator will sometimes make an awkward stretch to raise a smile or prove a point. Like Garrison Keillor, May--a professional storyteller and director of the Illinois Storytelling Festival--describes life as he has known it; but his work is more deliberate and elegiac, like soothing if somewhat melancholy bedtime stories. One of the 18 tales here describes waking on Sunday morning, attending mass, walking to the fish pond, then wandering across town to see a passing train pick up the mail bag. The absence of major events is precisely the point: reading one of these stories is like re-experiencing a long-gone day from childhood, one sensation following another on an endless summer afternoon.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Jim May, Midwest storyteller and founder of the Illinois Storytelling Festival, has collected some of his best Spring Grove tales. Growing up on a farm and in a tiny town in a devoutly Catholic family with a father who was a horse trader gave May plenty of fodder for his tales. May, an ambitious altar boy, reports that "attacks of holiness . . . dominated my middle years of grade school." He elaborates, "Many of my scruffy, athletic friends had written me off as a pious idiot, when in the nick of time puberty entered." Anyone who has heard May tell stories will miss the resonance and humor that cannot appear as strongly in print, but these well-spun tales about farm and family life will delight readers just the same. Denise Perry Donavin --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• ISBN-10: 0874833396
• ASIN: B000HWYXWW
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,869,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars This is what storytelling is all about, October 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Farm On Nippersink Creek (American Storytelling) (Audio Cassette)

A great book that touches anyone who ever grew up. While it entertains and makes me laugh, it triggers memories of my own life and feelings...just like storytelling should.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fond Memories, September 16, 2005

By 

John P. Kabot "Gambler6" (San Diego) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Farm On Nippersink Creek (American Storytelling) (Paperback)

Face it, fifty years ago life was a lot simpler. Nippersink Creek was the mighty Mississippi to any nine year old boy living in Spring Grove. We might have been too young to read Tom Sawyer, but we sure could live some of the same adventures of that great book. Tempering some of those great adventures was the influence of Catholic School with it's Sister "Leon" and Father "Fritz." They tempered and helped shape the path that led us from the banks of that muddy Nippersink to wherever life took us. It was a special time and a special place. One never to be duplicated but only to live on in our memories and hearts. Life was simpler fifty years ago, and stories such as these remind us of that fact and help to reconnect to that special time.