So goes the story with other boyish adventures, or should I say misadventures, of Penrod and his cohort in crime, Sam Williams. In Hand that Rocks the Cradle: Good Books to Read Aloud to Children, Nathaniel Bluedorn wrote, 'Penrod Schofield is twelve and has been volunteered by his mother for ‘The Pageant of the Table Round’ in which he is to play the ‘Child Sir Lancelot du Lake.’ He gets himself into mountains of trouble when he, at the last minute, exchanges his gaudy costume of castoff silk stockings and flannel long-johns (made by his well meaning mother) for the janitor’s overalls. The three books were published together in one volume, Penrod: His Complete Story, in 1931. Penrod establishes the characters and the relationships between them who go on to appear in two further books, Penrod and Sam (1916) and Penrod Jashber (1929). The book follows the trials and misadventures of Penrod Schofield, an eleven-year-old boy growing up in a large pre-World War I Midwestern United States city, in a similar vein to Tom Sawyer. Penrod is a collection of comic sketches that was first published in 1914. He was one of the most popular American novelists of his time, with The Two Vanrevels (1902) and Mary’s Neck (1932) each appearing on the annual best-seller lists nine times. Newton Booth Tarkington (1869–1946), born in Indianapolis, IN, and named for his uncle, Newton Booth, who was governor of California at the time, was an American novelist and dramatist primarily remembered for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918 awarded prize 1919), his best known work today due in part to its famous film treatment by Orson Welles in 1942 and its frequently favored listing on the Modern Library’s list of top-100 novels, and Alice Adams (1921 awarded prize 1922). Penrod (originally published in 1914 republished in 2006 by The Echo Library, 131 High St., Teddington, Middlesex TW118HH, England). Language level: 2 (some euphemistic expressions)įor more information e-mail Booth.

Publisher: Penguin Group USA, reprinted in 2007

Penrod booth tarkington 1914