Customer Reviews

Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing.

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As a young man, I found this book among some of my Father's collection. It seems it has been twenty years since I read it, but the images of life portrayed by the Author are still imprinted on my mind. I can remember the wholesome, innocent feeling that came over me, even as a rebellious youth, as I read each chapter. Even the detail of each story has escaped me now, but the impression it has left is inescapable. And now after all these years, Through Amazon.com, I am able to rekindle this friendship, between that old book and I. It is a "must read" and should be considered a classic for young people in school.

AS fate would have it, i was given this book at the tender age of 12 by my best friend's mother. Growing up in a house with 2 sisters i was clueless to the minds of young men..a mystery..never understood why the neighborhood tough guys felt the need to pelt us girls with grapefruits from the safety of their fortified clubhouses and armed camps. I love this book..Robert Smith has captured the innnocent and fearful thinking process of young boys that transcends the generations..haven't we all put our fists to our eyeballs in the dark of night to see the flashing lights??

Through it all he maintains a dry wit and subtle humor than endears the reader. I re-read it once a year just to get perspective on the youth in America...a treasure not to be missed..his narrative on losing at marbles to the town bully is a classic.....fears and joys..isn't that what childhood is all about?With a wry perspective and total honesty, Robert Smith manages to ring a bell of truth in this slice of life.

This timeless collection of childhood memories is a classic. It can be read at any age, because everyone, boy or girl, man or woman, can relate to its tellings of childhood memories, dreams, and shenanigans. This is the best book ever written, aside from the Bible.

I first read this book when I was 11 or 12, circa 1962.

It was so appealing that I adapted it into a play for a 7th grade book report. My teacher, the doughty Mrs. Kerrigan, took me to task for not reading a REAL play. I held my ground, however, and insisted that the dialogue and imagery made it as actable as any "play" could be.

Here I am, lifetimes later, still chuckling over this little masterpiece.

If you like Jean Shepherd's "Christmas Story", you will love this book!

I'm sure that mothers and daughters will enjoy the book as well, but fathers and sons will get the most from it. I first read a borrowed copy of this book at age 10 back in the 1970s, and I loved it. Its praise of living leisurely, making your own fun, spending time with friends rather than parents, even doing nothing at all, seemed to validate my own boyhood lifestyle. I never forgot the book and finally bought it for myself from Amazon 30 years later.

The book is now more than 50 years old, yet it seems strikingly contemporary because the trends that Smith spotted in the 1950s (structuring children's playtime, always trying to teach and "improve" our kids, being a "pal" to our kids) have only accelerated since. Smith treats everything with nostalgia and humor, making every page a joy, if a tiny bit sad.

I now have a baby boy of my own, and I'm going to save my copy for him to read, years from now. I strongly recommend this book to young fathers, and fathers-to-be.

What a wonderful little book! Very short, only 124 pages, and I think the best word to describe it is - bemusing. I was charmed by the writer's account of his childhood in the Roaring Twenties. Written in 1957, so many of his observations on parenting (and he had two of his own) are certainly true today. We micro-and macro-manage our children. Are they ever left to their own devices any more? I do remember one of the things he did, running a needle under the skin of my finger. I have a note in my copy that says this book should be given to whichever of my children's children reaches 6 first.

This book should never be out of print. A glorious, accurate dipiction of childhood from a boy's perspective. We can all relate. Sweet and innocent: when he talks about smoking "weed," it was real weeds from a back lot! When duct tape was the most valuable thing on the planet and an abandoned lot was a wonderland, it will all come back to you.

"The thing is, I don't understand what kids do with themselves any more," begins Smith. In 1950s suburbia, children, Smith thought, were overscheduled, with "play groups and athletic supervisors and Little Leagues and classes in advanced fingerpainting."

He was alarmed to discover that his own children and their friends had no idea how to play mumbly-peg. "Why don't the kids teach the other kids to play mumbly-peg?" he asked. Children were spending too much time playing games organized by adults in which "the rules were written down in a book." "In my block," he said, "the rules were written down in kids."

From there he proceeds to reminiscences of his childhood, the interior life of the child, and the value of unsupervised exploration. Warm, humorous, ingratiating, and perfect for reading aloud.

A 1957 bestseller, its title became a catchphrase, inspiring a Charles M. Schulz cartoon, A New York Times think piece about book titles, and an assertion that the title was the first American Zen koan. A 1974 research study on the benefits of briefly dropping out of college used the title "Where did you go? Out." A 1987 scholarly book on seventeenth-century English poetry commented on the ending of Paradise Regained; the scholar used the words: "Mother: 'Where did you go?' Son: 'Out.' Mother: 'What did you do?' Son: "Nothing.'"

Smith's book inspired Brown University professor Howard P. Chudacoff to write his 2007 book "Children at Play: An American History."

But this genial, affectionate, and well-written book is more than a warm and nostalgic reminiscence of childhood. It has something to say, and it seems as important in 2010 as it was in 1957. In due course, the book reaches its conclusion:

"[The father] was, I believe, asking for privacy. He was, I believe, entitled to it.

I think kids are, too.

Let them moon, let them babble, let them be scared.

I guess what I am saying is that people who don't have nightmares don't have dreams."

I got this book in the mail the other day from a childhood friend who'd found it in the book corner of an antique store. I researched it a bit and found out it was actually a bestseller when it was new, over fifty years ago, and went through several printings and paperback editions too before disappearing into that limbo of former bestsellsers. But sometimes what comes around goes around (or is it the other way around?), because I see this book was just reissued as a paperback last year. And it richly deserves it, no kidding.

Robert Paul Smith grew up in the 1920s and that's the period of his childhood he's mostly writing about, although he intersperses his memories with comments of his present life (or the mid-1950s when he wrote the book). I grew up in the 1950s, but many of the childhood activities Smith writes about were still happening then: playing Red Rover or Statues; finding a length of clothesline to tie each other up with or make bolos or lassos or jump ropes (girls only, of course); the endless variety of things to do with horse chestnuts; running through hoses or sprinklers on a hot summer day; building a tree house or clubhouse with found or filched scraps of lumber and other stuff. In fact Smith's stories of that homemade hut are utterly hilarious. He tells of what a magnificent structure it seemed at the time, but in hindsight he realizes it was really not much bigger that "a big doghouse," and "when there were more than two of us in it, no one of us could move." And of course there were the rules, passwords and oaths involved in club memberships. I remembered doing all this stuff; and it also brought to mind those long-ago Little Lulu comics, with Tubby, Willy, and Iggy and the "no girls allowed" sign on their clubhouse. He talks about wanting fireworks, knives and, of course, that BB-gun that was made so famous again in the 80s by little Ralphie in Jean Shepherd's Christmas Story.

My friend's note said he was sending me this book because it reminded him so much of my own memoir, ReedCityBoy (2004), and I had to admit he was right. I had written of many similar memories, despite the fact that I was a child of the 50s and wrote down my stories nearly fifty years after Smith did. Maybe childhood hasn't changed all that much when you come right down to it. Every kid has to learn things at his own rate and in his own time.

My copy of "WHERE DID YOU GO?" "OUT" "WHAT DID YOU DO?" "NOTHING" is an old faded 1957 hardcover edition, and in the flyleaf is laboriously written in a schoolboy's hand, the awkward cursive script from a fountain pen blurred and blotted, "To Mrs. Cissel, from George Earle Pierpont Mountcastle. January 30, 1958"

In January 1958 I'd just turned 14. I like to think that this book - brand new then - was a gift to a favorite teacher from a bookish, bespectacled kid like I was. If this is true, then I will say to young Master Mountcastle: "Good choice, George. I hope Mrs. Cissel appreciated it."

This is a very enjoyable read, or as kids today are wont to say, "It's a really fun book." - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir BOOKLOVER and the REED CITY BOY trilogy

Many times reading this book I related it to my own childhood in the 1980's. It's amazing to think that this was written in the 1950's, about the author's childhood in the 1930's. It's also hard to believe that such normalcy could have taken place in an era when we never hear about anything but misery. Unbelievable as well, is that happiness and life carried on without the direct interference of the New Deal. This book is truly a gem that will bring you back to the forts and treehouses we used to play in.