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Meeting Harris would never have happened were it not for liberal quantities of Schlitz and Four Roses. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
"Harris and Me" is a first-person narrative, told by a boy whose dysfunctional family has sent him to live with kinfolk on a backcountry farm in Minnesota. Harris is the bigger boy whose family has the farm. He becomes the narrator's surrogate older brother and role model for devil-may-care enjoyment of boyish wildness. The narrator sense that his own nature is different from Harris's but he treasures Harris's spirit. It's a quick read for an adult, a kind of hyper-condensed adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. It's funny fun for the right kid to read silently or out loud, but children raised in a household devoted to propriety may find it incomprehensible, since propriety is not a virtue on Gary Paulsen's farm.
One might suspect that this narrative, like many of Paulsen's, is semi-autobiographical. I'm very certain, however, that Paulsen has somehow gotten ahold of my unwritten memoirs, and used MY childhood for his model. I've seldom read anything that depicts the experiences of farm life, in Minnesota or in Sweden, fifty years ago or today, as accurately as this short book. I mention Sweden because I lived as a boy on a diary farm near Nykoping that was identical to Harris's. Like Paulsen, I've traveled very far, physically and culturally, from that farm, but in my heart of hearts I'm still Harris, and/or his admiring sidekick, myself. For a writer like Paulsen, "home" is not so much a place but rather a time of life.
Paulsen's most popular books are imaginative adventure tales featuring intrepid boys. "The Hatchet" is his best seller. Shorter, more personal books like "Harris and Me" are, in my opinion, better choices for kids to read, offering flashes of insight into maturity, however challenging, instead of day-dream invulnerability.
The story is set on a farm during the 1950s. The unnamed narrator, possibly Paulsen himself, spends a glorious summer with relatives -- his uncle Knute, Aunt Clair, and cousins Glennis and Harris. Harris becomes the narrator's constant companion and partner in crime, through hours of intense farm labor, enormous and frequent meals, and non stop high energy play.
Some of the boys' pranks are a bit too slap-stick for my tastes, such as an incident involving urinating on an electric fence. And some characters, such as the dirty, mute farmhand who seems to inhale pancakes, are little more than cartoons.
What I remember most about the book, though, are its many funny moments -- Harris believing that a movie (which he has seen several times, no less) is really happening...ambushing the pigs...attaching a motor to a bike and zooming down the road. "Harris and Me" captures the long, carefree days of childhood with joy and zest.
This autobiographical novel is about the summer Gary Paulsen spent at his cousin's farm. Harris is a real person! And so is Gary - so he didn't get to choose the ending to this story. Unfortunately, Gary's parents were mean drunks. But, somehow, he survived. And he has given us some of the best survival stories kids will ever read. So, if you're looking for a sequel, pick up one of his other books. Many are based on his life.
I had the honor of meeting Gary a few years ago at an author visit. He read aloud the chapter about his experience with the electric fence. We laughed so hard, tears were streaming down our faces. This story brings back some great memories of my childhood and the wild stunts my brothers pulled when we were growing up on our family farm.
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