Customer Reviews

Growing Up Simple: An Irreverent Look at Kids in the 1950s

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I loved this book. The chapter called "Too Little To Be President" alone is worth the price of the whole book. And if you can't laugh out loud at the tales of teenage boys delivering new school buses all over Texas, you need to up your meds!

While the author was growing up in Austin, I was growing up in Houston. It was amazing how similar life was in Texas' largest city and Texas' capitol city. The 50's were a wonderful time to be a kid - prosperity reigned and the world was (mostly) at peace. The book really captures the spirit of those years and brought back a wonderful era in a personal, humorous and fun manner.

First, a disclaimer: I have known and worked with George Arnold for years and I love him and his sweet wife to death. But even if I didn't know George and hadn't bought the book because of that, I'd write the same review. This is a great book for someone who has memories of the '50s (and perhaps those who don't) who want to remember things forgotten and laugh out loud a lot. The pranks in the movie theatre made me laugh so hard, I cried. We all need more laughter in our lives. Thanks to George Arnold for giving us some.

This book is fun to read. It's that SIMPLE! Others more sophisticated in methods of evaluation like it, too:

--It won the Violet Crown Award from Barnes & Noble as the best nonfiction book of 2003,

--It received the IPPY Humor Award from the Independent Publishers Book Awards as the funniest book published in North America in 2003, and

--Texas Public Relations Association (TPRA) presented its author, George Arnold, the highly coveted Silver Spur Award for marketing excellence.

If you like Mark Twain, you'll love George Arnold. This "nonfiction novel," kept me, a Mexican American female who grew up in 60s and 70s Texas, thoroughly entertained and laughing. Arnold has a real knack for telling stories. The "rabid reader" who gave only a one-star review for this book and called it "self-indulgent" proves that reading alot does not make one an astute reader. It's a memoir for crying out loud! "Growing Up Simple" won numerous awards--2003 Violet Crown Award for Best Nonfiction, the 2003 IPPY Book Award and the TPRA Silver Spur--for good reason. I heartily recommend it.

I felt it to be a very funny review of what Lower/Middle class kids went through in the 50`s and 60`s life was not easy and you made your fun where you could.

I did a book report/ research paper using Mr. Arnold's fine novel. Not only did I get an A on the report, Mr. Arnold gets an A from me for his book. It is funny, entertaining, and an overall good read.

This is one of the funniest books I have read in a while. It brings back such fond memories of my own child hood. Growing up in Texas was much simpler then and seems to be much more fun than the kids are having today.
It's a must read for anyone over 50.

I loved this book. I grew up in Austin a few years older and I laughed til I cried. Great memoir about a group of really smart prankster friends.

I suppose, growing up in the 40's and 50's myself, I expected a bit more "normal" raucous humor and behavioral descriptions. We grew up pretty poor. The author apparently grew up sligtly above middle class, was a football hero, and seemed to have few problems with school principals, teachers and counselors.

The entire book is a self-indulgent venture, rather than adventure, in writing a book about one's self rather than the "look at kids," with kids being plural. Most of the book is about Mr. Arnold and HIS capers. I expected more, I suppose, because I grew up with five brothers and a sister in a two-bedroom house; not on the wrong side of the tracks, but we could hear the trains from there.

Humor, again another anticipated element of the book, was noticeable absent.

I found myself just wanting to get through the book to get it over with because it appeared to be going nowhere, and ended up at the anticipated location.

Mandell Matheson