Boys in the Well

Sheree Haughian is an elementary-school teacher-librarian with the
Dufferin County Board of Education.

Back in the 1930s, summer was curiously lacking in day camps, video
games, and all the many other organized entertainments now regarded as
quite mundane. If you lived on a western-Canadian farm like Corrine
Kragh, you might be “so busy with nothing to do” you would be
compelled to invent your own excitement. Cecil Freeman Beeler’s spunky
heroine passes her days playing with her pet foal, heading off skunks,
and picking Saskatoon berries. She also learns to deal with boys—her
baby brother Peter; a chivalric Boy Scout from the city; a prairie
visitor; and the mischievous young neighbor she can’t decide whether
to like or loathe.

Adventures seem rather tame in this whimsical look at times past;
homespun atmosphere is all. The characters engage the reader through
their rich use of language. Mama’s immigrant syntax is matched by
Corrine’s highly descriptive statements about farm events and her own
feelings. She never admits to being confused about the way that things
happen: instead, she speaks of being “halfway between a mad and a
boo-boo.” Ken, the eloquent urban transplant, arrives on the farm
hoping for a “congenial safari,” but local Mertie tells it rather
more plainly: “Us kids mostly roll around like pigs in a hog
wallow.” Recommended.