In the first 30 minutes of the audio book no child or adult laughed or even smiled once. There was nothing funny or even amusing. We then had to answer children's questions about justified pyromania (is that possible?), looking down on "poor" people badly because they don't have much money, bullying (two times), inept/lazy police officers, animal abuse/torture and how teachers can hate students and promote them simply to get rid of them. Teachers apparently don't care about the welfare of any of their students just their own inconvenience of having students that misbehave or may have learning difficulties. As the author tells us, we should wish that bad things happen to any child who is poor, has behavioral problems, learns slowly and/or has unfit parents...at least until we show up and "save" them.
It doesn't matter how the book ends...the basic premise is way off base. We all (children included) ended up despising the author, Barbara Robinson. Why should we look down on that family and judge them so much?
Maybe the worst thing we can say about this book was that is was simply unfunny (not even amusing) and a hate-filled bore of a story. There are so many other children's books similar to this book that are funny, have children that do some crazy or even mean things, don't make the reader so self-righteous and still show some level of compassion throughout. Ex: Junie B. Jones, Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing, etc.
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