Customer Reviews

The Little Boy Down the Road: Short Stories & Essays on the Beauty of Family Life

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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My husband and I both LOVED this book! It was heartwarming, encouraging, and inspirational--not because it was sappy or sentimental, but because it held up a beautiful picture of what family life can be like when parents are truly living for the glory of God by investing time and love into each other and their children. It contains stories of fathers guiding and inspiring their sons, the uniqueness of each family, families enjoying each other (and their pets!) and many of the lessons we learn from our families. We both loved the chapter about "homeschool opera"--our kids do that all the time but we never had a name for it. :) Definitely a keeper! We've already recommended it to several friends.

I was somewhat surprised but rather pleased to find The Little Boy Down the Road in my mailbox one morning. It was the first I had heard of the book. I was drawn to it by its pastoral cover and its simple premise--"Short Stories and Essays on the Beauty of Family Life." As the subtitle says, this is a collection of stories and essays that attempt to reveal the beauty of family life. It is, perhaps surprisingly, the first of Douglas Phillips' books that I've read. Let me share a brief overview of its chapters.

"The Little Boy Down the Road" shares a son's joy in the return of his father and goes on to speak of the simple joys of parenthood. "The Woman Who Chose Life" is a remarkable story of God's providence in the gift of life while "The Art of Home School Opera" is a humorous look at the joys and importance of family eccentricities. I should note that in these early chapters I began to notice the repetition of certain words and phrases and felt like something was being said between the lines, that the author was building toward something, but was doing so using a lexicon that was unfamiliar to me. There was talk of homeschooling and patriarchy with many uses of the word multigenerational. But I digress.

Phillips is at his best when he is telling stories and allowing the stories to share the joys and beauties of family life. "The Animal Fair," his chapter on the many animals that have been pets to his family is as humorous as it is poignant. He says rightly that "Pets tend to accumulate." Once parents have opened the doors to one pet, others will inevitably follow. This has proven true in the Phillips family. "From rabbits to goats, tarantulas to chickens, dogs, horses, cats, fish, cows, crabs, birds, reptiles, vultures, and even baby deer--at some point or another, they have all lived with, beside, and even on top of the Phillips family." Through the chapter he describes some of the best and some of the worst pets they've had, tells the awful truth about chickens, and pleads with the readers never, ever to trust a Llama (and especially so when it lowers its ears). And through the funny stories, he tells how pets have blessed his family, taught responsibility, and even forced the children to grapple with tough lessons on mortality. With its shades of James Herriot and Farley Mowat, this chapter is the book's finest. You can download it and read it here.

"The Man's Library" warms the heart of this avid reader and challenges me with the importance of not only building my own library, but beginning to build one for my son (and daughters) as well. "The League of Grateful Sons" shares what Phillips learned from filming a documentary with survivors of the battle of Iwo Jima and the children of some who did not survive.

As the book comes to its final chapters, it transitions from stories to essays and, sadly, becomes weaker. Here Phillips shows his hand, explaining more fully the emphases of his ministry. He espouses the importance of quiver full theology, of naming children with distinctive names (though here he is able to poke fun at himself for the unusual names he and his wife have chosen for their children), of multigenerational thinking, and so on. What were small hints in the book's opening pages are unleashed more fully in its final chapters. This is not to say that any or all of what Phillips says here is wrong (though much of it is contentious and falls into the realm of disputable matters) but rather that the quality of writing is better when Phillips is telling stories rather than writing these essays. The book begins with a bang but ends with a bit of a fizzle.

There is a lot to learn from this man who has dedicated his career to emphasizing the importance of family but, more importantly, has dedicated his life to serving and leading the family God has given him. Your enjoyment of this book may well depend on just how much you enjoy the emphases of his ministry. Though I enjoyed reading the book (despite being convicted that my children are where they ought to be in public school, despite having only three kids, and despite never having used the word "multigenerational"), I couldn't help but feel that the book would have been better had it been just about half as long or had the book's second half been written in the style of the first.

I'll be honest: I was really looking forward to this book, inspite of the fact that I generally look on items published by the Vision Forum with wariness at best and abhorrence at worst. I love books on family, fatherhood and boyhood, so this gorgeously designed book looked like a possible gem inspite of its questionable parents. The Table of Contents alone was tempting: courageous childbirth, home operas, animals, sons and men at war? All ideal reading topics, at least for me; I know from personal experience that, as the synopsis claims, family times are the best adventures of life.

Unfortunately, the book itself proved to be seriously flawed in several key areas, and I have to say, I'm largely to blame for my own disappointment. Knowing Doug Phillips as an author, a teacher and a role model for very unusual manhood, I should have known better far sooner. I asked myself from the beginning if I really wanted to get inside the head of such a man; after all, I was able to listen to one of his better CDs, and plan to get two more after hearing excerpts from them. It turns out, though, that listening to a CD and reading a book by someone are two totally separate things.

Reading a book written entirely by Phillips and digging deeply into his mind was an experience I don't wish to repeat; many of his strange and completely unorthodox claims and faults are brought to the forefront. Only Doug Phillips could claim that patriarchy is the only way to avoid "patricide". Only Doug Phillips could turn an amusing story about pet goats into a paragraph-long rant against the United States' "unGodly" decision to legalize birth control (I'll leave it to your imagination how he pulled that crock off). And only Phillips could turn his own efforts to be moving into downright saccharine dialogue.

That's the funny thing about Phillips, in fact: in just about all of his articles and speeches, he either tries to be clever or amazingly empathetic, and the result is just embarassing to anyone who isn't already composing love letters to him (Phillips' followers are pretty much like Obama's: if he says anything stupid, they either defend it or develop rapid amnesia). With Phillips, a great deal of his dialogue sounds pretentious, even if he's sincere. Since womanhood, for example, is so downgraded and limited by him, he attempts to pull out the trick of many complimentarians before him to make up for it: over-compensation. When he speaks of women or daughterhood, he pours syrup, honey and sugar into his words, the mixture of which sounds more like a recipe for a diabetes attack than anything resembling real feeling or empathy. Since he thinks manhood, on the other hand, is the most holy thing under Christ Himself, you can practically see him flexing muscles and waving a flag for Viagra when he speaks of it. Topics from his blog include, "Manly men write manly letters. Matt Chancey wins the Art of Manliness Man of the Year Award!" Really, why all this stressing over the fact that he's a man and thinks of manly things? Does he think we'll forget this? (Well, maybe he does; after all, he did nickname a feminist he hates after a villain from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and that would give some people reason for concern...)

All in all, I'm afraid this book was far from the family treasure I'd hoped it would be. If you love family or see certain issues the same way Phillips does, though, you may enjoy it. It's not completely flawed; I gave it three stars for the better articles and the book's purpose, which I'm positive was a good one. And that, if nothing else, is a nice change from the Vision Forum's usual pattern.

He is not an avid reader but he did read this book. He greatly enjoyed the stories about the different animal pets that the Phillips family has had. He had to share the stories with me and we laughed so hard we cried.
He found it very encouraging to keep on running the race and that he was right on track.
I would highly encourage any woman to get this book as a gift for her husband especially a home schooling family with lots of kids. Dads need encouragement too.
Sorry I did not read the book - I felt it was written for a MAN and not for a woman therefore I let my Man share with me what he wanted to and what he wants to mull over in his mind he can.