McBroom's Ghost,

This was one of my children's favorite read-aloud books - especially the sing-song reciting of the names. Read it with drama. Read it with laughter. It's great fun for every child.

Judging from the reviews - or lack of them - the McBroom books by Sid Fleischman have more or less gone by the wayside and disappeared from kids' reading today. That's a shame; while I wouldn't necessarily call them "classics", they're fun tall tales that are neither moralizing nor pedagogical, just good fun reading for kids, and the adults who grew up on them, or have a fondness for the old-fashioned tale-spinning that they embody. This is the 4th book, originally published in 1971, and it features a classic old-fashioned yarn: the winter "So cold that..." How cold was it? So cold that the comb's teeth chattered...so cold that the rooster's crow froze....so cold that the red barns turned blue. You get the idea. The story here is that there seems to be a ghost making the rounds on Josh McBroom's one-acre wonderful farm, and McBroom tries all kinds of things to get rid of it. His wife Melinda and 11 kids (WillJILLHesterCHESTERPeterPOLLYTimTOMMaryLARRYandlittleCLARINDA) aren't fans of staying on - but if McBroom leaves he'll be giving in to his no-good neighbor Heck Jones who stands on the hill above his house dressed all in white, looking like Colonel Sanders and eating shoofly pie. Jones' razorback hogs are also contributing to McBroom's misfortune and...well, you'll have to get it yourself to see how it turns out. This brought back memories - I loved the tall tales of Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, etc as a kid, and had at least one other McBroom book in addition to this one; I suspect it was "McBroom Tells the Truth", in which we learn the origin and secret of the magical one-acre wonder-farm. I'll have to go rooting around in the attic for that one, too. Charmingly illustrated (in pencil/pen & ink I think; some of the book is just blue tones, other pages are full color) by Robert Frankenberg - though I use the word "charm" advisedly, as McBroom and his family aren't the prettiest bunch of red-headed hillbillies you'll see. But I bet you'll love 'em anyway.