This is like Santa Claus all over again....
As a child, I used to inherit many things from my older cousin Kevin, particularly books. Between about 7 and 9 one of my favourites of these handed-down books was The Pushcart War, by Jean F Merrill.
At about nine the book got picked up in one of Mom's yearly sweeps to be passed on to the next appropriately aged cousins.
Yesterday I re-read the book...but something seemed off right from the beginning. The book was written ten years AFTER the Pushcart War, and they were saying the war began in 1986. Which would have meant it was written in 1996. Except that I read the book in the eighties!
Must be a typo, I thought, and continued on. As I read, more and more things started looking odd for a book based on historical events. Then I read the blurb on the back of the book and saw one use the word "satire" and thought, surely not.
But no, I looked it up this morning: The Pushcart War NEVER HAPPENED! It wasn't real!
LOL This becomes fairly obvious reading as an adult (even one who's trying really hard not to believe it), but as a kid, I accepted this as being about events that had really happened! It had all the hallmarks to my young brain of things based on history: dates, reports of newspaper headlines, a handful of letters to the editor...heck, they even listed some stuff off a phone book page during the year the supposed events took place!
Dude, all these years... In the unlikely event I ever visited New York, General Anna's statue was on my list of things I'd want to see!!
Even as a kid I thought it was unusual that everything worked out so well for EVERYONE, but I never caught on at all. (Aside: Admittedly, I was also the kid who didn't realize that the reason the guy on Polka Dot Door never saw Polkaroo was because he was WEARING the Polkaroo costume. I just thought he was busy elsewhere and felt very sympathetic for his bad luck. Totally never occurred to me!)
I am both deeply amused and a little bit dismayed. General Anna, Frank The Flower, Mr. Jerusalem, Maxie Hammerman...none of them are real!
It's like Santa Claus all over again!
But I enjoyed the re-read anyway. :)
At about nine the book got picked up in one of Mom's yearly sweeps to be passed on to the next appropriately aged cousins.
Yesterday I re-read the book...but something seemed off right from the beginning. The book was written ten years AFTER the Pushcart War, and they were saying the war began in 1986. Which would have meant it was written in 1996. Except that I read the book in the eighties!
Must be a typo, I thought, and continued on. As I read, more and more things started looking odd for a book based on historical events. Then I read the blurb on the back of the book and saw one use the word "satire" and thought, surely not.
But no, I looked it up this morning: The Pushcart War NEVER HAPPENED! It wasn't real!
LOL This becomes fairly obvious reading as an adult (even one who's trying really hard not to believe it), but as a kid, I accepted this as being about events that had really happened! It had all the hallmarks to my young brain of things based on history: dates, reports of newspaper headlines, a handful of letters to the editor...heck, they even listed some stuff off a phone book page during the year the supposed events took place!
Dude, all these years... In the unlikely event I ever visited New York, General Anna's statue was on my list of things I'd want to see!!
Even as a kid I thought it was unusual that everything worked out so well for EVERYONE, but I never caught on at all. (Aside: Admittedly, I was also the kid who didn't realize that the reason the guy on Polka Dot Door never saw Polkaroo was because he was WEARING the Polkaroo costume. I just thought he was busy elsewhere and felt very sympathetic for his bad luck. Totally never occurred to me!)
I am both deeply amused and a little bit dismayed. General Anna, Frank The Flower, Mr. Jerusalem, Maxie Hammerman...none of them are real!
It's like Santa Claus all over again!
But I enjoyed the re-read anyway. :)