The Real Diary of a Real Boy
Henry A. Shute
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Sept. 6, 2013)
A Masterpiece of Humor One of the merriest, sweetest, most wholesome books ever written. Here is a book from which you would not spare a single line or word. You will laugh and cry, and laugh and cry again and again, before you turn the last page of this incomparable record of boyhood life. Young and old, schooled and unschooled, will find the same infinite charm in its pages, and all because, (says ‘Life’) “It is a tag end of the Magic Carpet. Open its pages and, Presto! The years fall away and we are ten again!’” “It is very funny.” -Springfield Republican “The laughs the Diary arouses are hearty reminiscent laughs.” -New York Sunday “It seems too clever to be real.” -Boston Herald “It is a delightful book that takes you back to boyhood days and presents all the fun and frolic of country life.” -Boston Journalist “Delicious humor, contagious fun.” -New York World “For spontaneous, unconscious humor this Diary ranks with the best works of modern fun-makers, and it gains an added interest from the fact that nearly all of the 125 persons who figure in its are still alive, and many of them are now prominent in business or professional life.” -People & Patriot, Concord, N. H. "In his own time he was a living legend – as lawyer, judge, musician, and especially, as author….An estimated 20,000 persons witnessed the parade that concluded the 1938 celebration, one in which they saw carried aloft a 'huge copy' of Shute's best-loved work, 'The Real Diary of a Real Boy,' a work so beloved that it went into at least seventeen editions in his lifetime and at least three more after it (and so beloved that he wrote not one but several sequels to it)." -Malcolm Freiberg, Massachusetts Historical Society “This is a happy, healthy, jolly book.” -Cambridge Tribune “Yes, it’s a real Diary of happy, carefree days, full of native humor, and of special interest because of the revelations of the boyhood of certain conspicuous men.” -Paterson, N. J., Guardian “It is our impression that the boy grew into a very decent and manly man.” -New York Evening Sun “No man will read this book without indulging in personal reminiscence.” -Boston Advertiser “Interesting addition to the study of juvenile psychology, the working of the boyish idea.” -Boston Courier "No interpretation of boyhood and its unconscious humor is any truer or funnier." -Publishers Weekly “Should be read by every teacher who has the care of boys, and by parents as well. They would surely have a better knowledge of the ways of a boy’s heart after the reading. A most charming book.” -Spirit of ’76 “If ‘all the world loves a lover,’ it is equally true that everyone is interested in, and amused by the average boy. The ‘real boy’ of this book is a typical boy, and he wrote his diary in a way to call out a hearty laugh to each line. He found, as a boy, the humor and the tragedy of boy life, and even the tragedy was humorous. He lived I Exeter, N. H., and he and his boon companions called the academy boys ‘Stewdcats.’ Their favorite occupation, when they had nothing better to do, was ‘plugin stewdcats.’ Many of the characters are now distinguished men of affairs. The book is unique in its way and is well worth the price to catch up and laugh over when one feels an impending attack of ‘the blues.’” -Education, Volume 23, September, 1902