Book Review: "Harris and Me"

By DANIEL IVKO, age 12

Gary Paulsen the author of “ Harris and Me” can be very funny when he wants to be. This book is told in the third person, about a boy whose alcoholic parents send him away to spend each summer with family relatives. One summer he is sent to stay with the Larson’s, farmers in a remote area of Minnesota. The story focuses around the humorous events of a city boy learning to live on a farm with Harris. His parents actually want him to learn to be a farmer, but instead he learns how to be a person that is mischievous and imaginative. According to the author, Gary Paulsen, this story is based on his own life. In this book, he has created a character that kids will love to read about, but would hate to be anywhere near in real life. Harris is rude and a troublemaker, but he has a sense of fun and excitement that makes you want know what he’ll do next. Like his other books, Soup and The Great Brain, Harris causes most of the trouble, while the non-mischievous narrator gets a good part of the blame (and often the pain). Half of the laughs come about as a result of Harris’s crazy ideas, like attaching a washing-machine motor to a bicycle or that pigs were Nazis, or trying to catch a half-crazy chicken. This is a book that kids will love to read.