Pee-Wee Harris

racine, wi: whitmann, 1922. Hard cover. Good. No dust jacket. Signed by previous owner. Pee-Wee Harris by Fitzhugh, Percy Keese Hard cover. whitman, RACINE, WI (1922) Good. No dust jacket. Signed by previous owner. PAGES YELLOWING iv, 219 p. front., plates. 20 cm. Includes Plates. BOOK... 219 p. Pee-Wee Harris by Fitzhugh, Percy Keese Hard cover. whitman, RACINE, WI (1922) Good. No dust jacket. Signed by previous owner. PAGES YELLOWING iv, 219 p. front., plates. 20 cm. Includes Plates. BOOK REVIEW; . Author Fitzhugh wrote a number of book ser Pee-Wee Harris by Fitzhugh, Percy Keese Hard cover. whitman, RACINE, WI (1922) Good. No dust jacket. Signed by previous owner. PAGES YELLOWING iv, 219 p. front., plates. 20 cm. Includes Plates. BOOK REVIEW; . Author Fitzhugh wrote a number of book series featuring different scouts from "Troop1, Bridgeboro, N.J.". Pee Wee was featured in a twelve book series that ran from 1922 through 1930. This particular book was the second in the series. While the other scouts from the other series have been largely forgotten, Pee Wee endures. That may be because of his honest appeal, and it may be because Pee Wee was successfully transitioned to his own "Boys Life" comic strip that continues to run to this day. Pee Wee is a little guy with boundless energy, an active imagination, and a total commitment to the values of Scouting. Quick to draw wrong conclusions he gets himself into and then out of all sorts of scrapes and adventures, his success usually turning on his Scouting skills and plain stick-to-itness. In this volume Pee Wee falls asleep in the wrong car, is accidentally kidnapped when the car is driven away, and then decides, based on snippets of conversation he overhears, that the people driving away with him are criminals on the run. Complications, action, and slapstick ensue. These books are appealing as historical documents, since they are set almost 100 years ago and are loaded with details about day to day life. (The car Pee Wee is in has to be "sparked" with the "ignition" turned on. ) They are appealing as funny, high action, whiz-bang adventures. They are also appealing because Pee Wee is a regular kid who always tries to do the right thing, but without any preachy, bland, or tedious moralizing. This is all Scout Law, Scout Oath, and Scout Promise stuff, and that's all fresher and more relevant than you might think. This is certainly a fine find for an older former Scout who'd like to take a trip down memory lane, (I remember Pee Wee quite clearly from the mid-60's), but it could very well also appeal to a modern middle grade reader. The prose is a bit formal and sometimes a touch dry, but Fitzhugh has a subtle sense of humor and writes Pee Wee as a bit on the cheeky side. The pace is a lot faster than I remembered and the plots are clever. Certainly if I had a young Scout who liked to read I'd give one of these Pee Wee books a try.