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Welcome to Centerburg! Where you can win a hundred dollars by eating all the doughnuts you want; where houses are built in a day; and where a boy named Homer Price can foil four slick bandits using nothing but his wits and pet skunk.
The comic genius of Robert McCloskey and his wry look at small-town America has kept readers in stitches for generations!
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Homer Price is a quietly confident, unbefuddled, and laconic boy around whom a series of somewhat unusual events occur. In the most memorable episode, Homer tends his progress-seeking but work-shy uncle's lunch counter while its newfangled automatic donut machine, short a piece of its machinery, turns out thousands and thousands of donuts as crowds gather to watch. In other stories, Homer captures a team of robbers with the help of pet skunk Aroma, participates in the winding of what is thought to be the largest ball of string in existence, and helps the sheriff discover the identity of the mysterious stranger that has come to town.
Homer's hobby is building radios, which is significant, as the book's world is a pre-television landscape where simple pleasures such as getting a haircut at the local barber shop, pitching horseshoes, or reading the latest issue of Super-Duper comic book at the soda fountain are the highlights of the day, and the autumn county fair the highlight of the year. Throughout, McCloskey subtly weaves the idea of inevitable change, represented not only by the unstoppable donut machine, but by the 100-house suburb of identical, prefabricated houses (each has 'a print of Whistler's Mother over the fireplace') that sprouts up within a week on historical Centerburg land. But McCloskey honors the past while accepting the present and anticipating the future: there are as many mildly progressive citizens of Centerburg as there are mildly traditional ones.
All the pieces are charming, light, funny, and pleasant. While there are no heavy-handed messages, good manners, strength of character, and acceptance of eccentricity and difference are stressed. McCloskey also quietly and humorously comments on courting and marriage rituals, politics, and the role of boredom and gossip in small town life. Though the focus is on Homer, the book is in fact about all of the citizens of Centerburg, with Homer really only one of the crowd.
Adults will enjoy rediscovering Homer Price and sharing it with children, who may see some merit in Price's unhurried sense of wonder about life, the world, and the simple things around him.
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