Customer Reviews

Please Don't Eat the Daisies

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well, maybe my title is going a bit too far, but this book has long been one of my favorites. it is not a well known book, despite having had a tv show and movie based on it. i think it is sad, since this collection of stories deserves to be known by all. it is not deep reading, by any means, as the title most assuredly reveals, but it is fun reading, reading that will take your mind off things. the stories in this book are a collection of jean kerr's various magazine articles reflecting on her life, her family, and the always amusing events that surround her. this book may have been written in the fifties, but most of the things she discusses still occur today in everyday life. i recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a lighthearted laugh and a good read. you won't be sorry you took a trip into the garden. (gosh that was a bad pun!)

An hilarious collection of essays by Jean Kerr , playwright, wife and mother. Very funny and unsentimental accounts of family life, full of wonderfully quotable lines. For instance, when she speaks of looking for a larger house "I wanted a house that would have four bedrooms for the boys, all of them located some distance from the living-room - say in the next country somewhere". Her comments on theatrical life are as funny as her comments on family life, as when she observes that the failure of a play, according to the producer, is always to be blamed on "that first-night audience". She understands children better than any child psychologist, as when she observes that you should never say to children "Are you trying to drive your poor moomy smack out of her mind?" Of course they are, but do you think they'll admit it?" A funny, funny book.

It's remarkable how undated this book reads: children are still driving their moms crazy, husbands still have jobs that wives have to work around, and women still have to fit their jobs around the rest of the family...Kerr writes about domestic life, work life (although she was self-employed as a writer, she didn't seem to have tons of free hours to devote to her craft-- and most of her plays didn't do that well; she is roughly comparable to an affluent working mom of today, doing many jobs, but none of them especially well). What I love most about this book, in these days of articles on supermoms and the "mommy-wars," is that Kerr doesn't pretend to be Mrs. Perfect, or even Mrs. Tries So Hard. She admits she wants to sleep till noon; and she is a faithful attendee at nearly every play her critic husband must review, because, as she puts it, "I have four young sons, so naturally I need to get out a lot." Funny, relevant, and somewhat neglected among the canon of humor writing--when WILL women be allowed to be funny?