Horrible, horrible book! Filled with horrible people doing horrible things to each other! I'd expected this to be similar to [b:Soup|493508|Soup (Soup, #1)|Robert Newton Peck|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1175210367s/493508.jpg|3275154] or to [b:Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective|789344|Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective (Encyclopedia Brown, #1)|Donald J. Sobol|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1298650085s/789344.jpg|1998683], filled with the fun or entertaining adventures of precocious young boys.
Instead, we get John, the narrator, telling us about all the ways his selfish, manipulative, scheming older brother Tom has of swindling people out of their money. And we get John purposefully getting the mumps so he can pass it on to his brothers and laugh at them while they're still sick after he's well again. And a town who won't support the new Jewish shopkeeper--to the extent that he starves to death! The low point of the book for me was when they actually blamed that poor man's death on his being Jewish--because it meant he was too proud to ask for help. Seriously?!
This is absolutely not the sort of thing I'd want any of my students to have to read. I'm shocked it's considered a book for children and has gotten the ratings it has here.