cover image Grandma's Boy

Grandma's Boy

Donald Davis. August House Publishers, $12 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-87483-582-3

On this recording, consummate storyteller Davis recalls--with plenty of down-home warmth and humor--the childhood visits he made to his grandmother's rural North Carolina home. Davis's deceptively simple tales have the distinct and easygoing pace of family yarns spun on the front porch. He gleefully remembers the best thing about staying with Grandma in a farmhouse with no electricity or running water: no baths! Davis's descriptions of the loving--and extra-lenient--ways of grandparents will surely strike a chord with many young listeners. And in one particularly memorable passage, inspired by the taunt ""Boys are better than girls are,"" an eight-year-old Davis, his younger brother and their two cousins experience the repercussions of a very funny battle of the sexes involving library books, corncobs and ""piles of brown stuff one of my granddaddy's cows had left."" Ages 8-up. (Dec.) FYI: Families will find additional listening fun on Davis's Braces, a simultaneous release about the sometimes humorous traumas of young orthodontia patients. (Cassette, 57 min. $12 ISBN 0-87483-581-X, ages 8-up; Dec.)