Customer Reviews

Tales of a Texas Boy - Large Print

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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Tales of a Texas Boy is a charming collection of anecdotes about life in Western Texas during the Great Depression. The author has related these stories through the narrative voice of Eddie, who is a slightly fictionalized version of her own father. These twenty vignettes are retold in first person, with an appropriate Texan dialect. I plan to use them in my fifth grade classroom as models for writing personal narrative. Each story is fairly short, the perfect length for a quick classroom reading, and will undoubtedly spark the students to respond with anecdotes of their own. ("That makes me think of the time ...") Although the historical setting of the tales provides an unfamiliar backdrop for most students, they will be able to relate to stories about Eddie meeting a bevy of skunks in a cornfield, briefly living his dream of becoming a cowboy, and watching an act of acrobatic derring-do from a sheep dog. Because each story revolves around one simple but charming episode of daily life, they provide perfect models for writing workshop.

Dianne K. Salerni
Author of High Spirits: A Tale of Ghostly Rapping and Romance

Let me say up front that not only do I know the man these stories are written about, I am married to the author. Make of that what you will.

The stories are snapshots of life on a west Texas farm during the Great Depression. Eddie, the narrator, tells us of livestock auctions, county fairs, fishing trips, cattle drives, swindlers, thieves and life and death just south of the Dust Bowl. Told in the first person in an easy, uncomplicated style, they make a good read for any age. Younger readers will connect with the journey to young adulthood, while us older folk appreciate the vividness of the picture so gently painted for us.
The end of the book leaves you wanting more.

"Tales of a Texas Boy" is a collection of twenty anecdotal stories told by a young boy, Eddie Perkins, who lived on a farm in rural Texas with his mother, father, a younger brother, and a younger sister during the 1930s when the country was deep in the Great Depression. I assume that Eddie is a fictional character, although the stories read like a true memoir.

I enjoyed the book very much. I was born in the 1940s, and I have a special fondness for the period from the 1920s through the 1950s, the period when my parents and I were growing up and coming of age. Marva Dasef has done a marvelous job of capturing what it was like for kids in the rural southwest in the 1930s. They probably never realized how tough their life was, and they actually had fun. Even though I was born a generation later, I related to the stories, especially in how siblings got along with each other.

Some of Eddie's anecdotes might have seemed mundane to another Texas kid in the era, but to me, a suburban kid in the post-WWII era, they were far from mundane. Try to imagine the thrill of hunting for (and finding) dinosaur fossils or going to town to buy livestock. Rattlesnake hunting with the local men was a thrill for Eddie, and little did he know what kind of animal he would rescue from a huge rattler's mouth one day. And handling a 1500-pound jackass? No problem, but make sure you get the instructions for taming the beast!

Some of Eddie's neighbors ("neighbor" meaning they lived no more than a few miles away in the sparsely settled west Texas landscape) were especially interesting, notably the Luck brothers, Fred and Frank. Although they were twin brothers living together, they passionately hated each other and spent most of their time trying to kill each other. Unfortunately they had a habit of taking things that didn't rightfully belong to them, including women, and this kept them in hot water!

Eddie's adventures included a remarkable encounter with a famous movie star. No spoilers, but just think "Come up and see me sometime, boys." Okay, that was probably a spoiler!

The most poignant moments of the book were Eddie's recounting his ma and pa's stories, including his pa's service in World War I.

I enjoyed "Tales of a Texas Boy" so much that I bookmarked some of my favorite stories for rereading. Most of the stories are short and would make great readings to kids today who can hardly imagine a time of grinding poverty with no modern conveniences, and yet a time when kids like themselves made do with what they had and had fun.

Definitely two thumbs up and five stars.

REVIEWED BY: Wayne Walker

This book is a collection of twenty stories told by Edward Perkins (Eddie) who lived during the Depression with his Pa, Ma, younger sister Dorothy (Sister), and little brothers James and John, on a 640-acre farm near Hereford, TX, in the panhandle of the state. It gives a picture of days when life was simpler as viewed by an eleven-year-old boy, whose experiences are reminiscent of both Laura Ingalls Wilder and Tom Sawyer. A note in the front of the book says, "All characters and events in this book are fictitious." However, a note on the back cover says, "The author's father is the real Eddie narrating the stories inside this book."

In fact, at the end of one story about how Eddie's Pa asked a fairly well known amateur detective named Frank Norfleet to help find a con man who had cheated him, a note says, "Frank Norfleet and Burke Mathes were real people. Eddie and his father did not actually meet them. In other words, this is a Texas Tall Tale." Thus, we may conclude that the stories in the book are perhaps based on some real events but many have been fictionalized. I found the book to be very entertaining. Children, and adults too, should get a lot of laughs out of reading all about Eddie and his exploits--whether they are from Texas or not.

Parents who try to be careful about the language in the books their children read will just want to be aware that the "d" word is found once in a story where a stranger uses it to describe his daughter who had tried to steal something from Eddie and his Pa on a trip, but Pa soundly criticizes him for saying it and it is very minor. Tales of a Texas Boy is a lot of fun. So you are invited to sit down, take your shoes off, and hear all about Dad Boles with his tame bear Sophie, Bucephalus (Beau) the jackass, skunks in the corn patch, the mammoth bones at Clovis, the rather strange Luck twins, Cage McNatt's prize sow, Mae West, and many others.

From My personal blog;

As some of you know, I am a reader. Actually all of us are readers here and we have a liking for different stuff. Time of course for some of us is a little hard to find, such as the Mr. and his work schedule.
Though I have time. Lately I have had a couple books sent to me by mail. Getting around to reading depends on how I feel. If my migraine is acting up there is no way I can sit down to read a book, or of course when chores come up or what not....

Today I sat down to read one of these books. Like the post says this book is called Tales Of A Texas Boy.

This book is a collection of short stories. Just part of the life and times of the authors father told in the unique way only Marva Dasef can.

This book takes us back in time to the depression, to World War 1, to a harder but a unforgettable time in American History. It tells of the turn of the century vehicles where one had to hand crank it to get it going, to riding horses to school everyday.

This is very much my style of a read! Cowboys and horses, tales of the Great Depression from someone who was there! Tales of the turn of the century when a mans word was like gold.

I love history, I love real history, I love western history, and I really enjoyed this book!

Purchased this for our young son just before his first trip to Texas. He finished it before we landed in Houston and re-told the stories to anyone who'd listen. An easy read; wholesome and funny, too. A great book for boys.

It's not often that I pick up a book that carries me to another time and place and makes me feel right at home. Tales of a Texas Boy did just that. Marva Dasef has done a wonderful job. Eddie is a delight to listen to as he talks about life in Texas. I can only add ditto to the words of the other reviews. Watch out for the skunks in the corn patch. Marva, good on you.

Tales of a Texas Boy is a collection of 21 reminiscences of rural life in the Texas panhandle during the Depression, told in the voice of an eleven year old remembering his childhood as an elderly man (modeled after the author's father). Each tale is short and complete in itself, and all add up to a convincing evocation of what life was like during those days in that area of Texas.
The boy, of course, would not dwell on hardship, deprivation, or lack of creature comforts. From his point of view, he had regular chores to perform, a loving, fairly strict family to live with, and various spells of an interesting or exciting nature to experience.
These include adventures with snakes, a man who had a pet bear, a livestock auction, driving his father's Model A pickup truck, a wild jackass, various odd neighbors, going on an old-fashioned cattle drive, dogs, skunks, fishing, chickens, and his little sister, to name a few. Each story is preceded by a few sentences of authorial scene-setting--a nice touch--and a small black and white photograph, not credited or explained, but adding a pleasant visual accent to the pages.
The prose style has a countrified flavor, but not excessively so. Each story is well narrated, with the right details in the right place and usually a satisfying and appropriate conclusion.
Tales of a Texas Boy is intended to be a young adult book, but I see no reason younger children wouldn't enjoy it too, or adults, for that matter. I enjoyed it myself, and I am very far from a young adult. It reminded me of some of the stories J. Frank Dobie, the grand old man of Texas folklore, used to love. In fact, parents who are in the habit of reading bedtime stories to their children (an excellent idea) might find children as young as five would be entertained by them--the length of the stories is about right, and they offer a fine opportunity for parental dramatic reading. Indeed, the point could be impressed upon the child that daily life, however prosaic it might seem now, is worth gathering and writing down for the interest it might have in the future. It's easy to imagine a sleepy child asking why the Texas Boy never watched television. Calling grandpa and grandma!
(Al Past is the author of the popular Distant Cousin series and reviews for PODBRAM.)

Tales of a Texas Boy took me home. I grew up in Texas on a large chicken farm with a grandmother who told me stories of the 'good ol days'. Marva captured for me a sense of peace and a longing for how things use to be. This is a great book for children of all ages. Marva, Hon would be proud.
Sarah--Utah

Tales of A Texas Boy is a funny, charming, and bittersweet vision of a vanished time. Its host of characters include a jack mule from Georgia named Samson, a grandfather who fought in the Argonne, and (unbeknownst to Eddie) Mae West, encountered in a roadside café. The stories, narrated in Eddie's West Texas accent, perfectly capture his childlike perceptiveness. The sense of place is wonderful, whether we are passing the evening on horseback across the prairie, bone-hunting in the dry washes or watching Sophie the bear roll up to the county fair sitting in the back seat of a Studebaker. What a pleasure it must be to spend a day with the man behind these stories!