The Youngest Boy - by Jim Heynen (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>"Jim Heynen's short stories hold an abundance of good will and human feeling...They are little news items of the human spirit."--<b>Raymond Carver</b><p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>Jim Heynen's stories about unnamed farm boys first appeared many years ago with <em><strong>The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap</strong></em>. Several collections of the boy stories have been published since then and have been models in the short-short or prose poem form now used by many other writers. This is the first collection to focus on the youngest boy, a character who can be a dreamer one minute, a trouble-maker the next, and a problem-solver the next. <em><strong>The youngest boy's</strong> </em>charm is in his unpredictability.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>Jim Heynen's delightful new collection of stories, <em><strong>The Youngest Boy</strong></em>, is filled with scenes and sketches that will make you laugh and then sigh. Just as the exquisite illustrations by Tom Pohrt are both beautifully concise and emotionally open, so Jim's stories offer multi-layered and multiple ways of reading. The eponymous <em><strong>Youngest Boy</strong></em> is a wonderful combination of trickster, super-hero, and PR spokesperson. As a farm kid myself, I identified with the boy's tender negotiations with the reality of farm life: he knows life on the farm is made of beauty and grit; he's seen a calf being born, a chicken being bullied, and he knows how to deal with the condescension of town kids and the harassment of older boys. By the time we get to the end of the book, we understand that a 'beautiful world' is one that includes the calf who has learned to avoid the electric fence and the crow feasting on the side of the road. 'What a beautiful world' the youngest boy says to himself, and readers will be telling each other: what a beautiful book!--<strong>Joyce Sutphen</strong>, <strong>Minnesota State Poet Laureate</strong></p> <p>When I reached the last page of The Youngest Boy, I found myself in awe that such a slender book could contain so much life. Jim Heynen's prose is always dazzling and precise. Here, with deceptive simplicity--accompanied by Tom Pohrt's amusing drawings --Heynen has drawn an evocative, mesmerizing portrait of human warmth, camaraderie, and love. <strong>David Biespiel</strong>, author of <em>A Place of Exodus: Home, Memory, and Texas</em></p> <p>Jim Heynen left his family's Iowa farm for the wide world many years ago, but the farm never left his mind. And from that mind comes a parade of winsome stories about this mythic little hero, the youngest boy--often ignored by the elders, plucky and expendable, constantly courting trouble, curious, tirelessly industrious in his shenanigans, and ever alive to the unfolding creation of farm life. Readers will relish the close attention this boy brings to everything he touches as resident inspector of the intricate ordinary lives of animals, crops, customs, secrets, and treasures of enigma lost and found. He's a kind of Huck drifting through the seasons, an unruly seed in good earth.--<strong>Kim Stafford</strong>, author of<em> Singer Come from Afar</em></p> <p>In a series of nostalgic snapshots, Jim Heynen returns to the rural midwest, a land of cornfields, haymows, farm auctions, newborn pigs, eccentric adults and daydreaming children. <em>The Youngest Boy</em> is a playful, poignant, vivid, funny book.--<strong>Julie Schumacher</strong>, author of <em><strong>Dear Committee Members</strong></em> and <em><strong>The Shakespeauore Requirement</strong></em></p><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><p>Jim Heynen grew up on an Iowa farm in one of the last areas in the state to get electricity. He attended a one-room schoolhouse and graduated from eighth grade at age 12 before going on to college and then graduate school at the University of Iowa and again at the University of Oregon.'p He is best known for his short-short stories <strong><em>The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap</em></strong>, Graywolf Press; <em><strong>You Know What is Right;</strong></em> North Point Press <em><strong>T</strong><strong>he One-room Schoolhouse</strong></em>, Knopf; <em><strong>The Boys' House;</strong></em> Minnesota Historical Society Press and <em><strong>Ordinary Sins</strong></em>, Milkweed Editions). Minnesota astronaut George Pinky Nelson took a recording of Heynen's stories for bedtime listening on his last space mission. Heynen has also published three novels (<em><strong>The Fall of Alice K</strong>)</em> Milkweed Editions' <em><strong>Cosmos Coyote and William the Nice</strong></em> YA, Henry Holt' <strong><em>Being Youngest</em></strong> YA, Henry Holt), as well as several collections of poetry, including <strong><em>A Suitable Church</em></strong> Copper Canyon Press and <strong><em>Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems</em></strong> Confluence Press. He wrote prose vignettes for two photography books published by The University of Iowa Press, Harker&'rsquo's Barns and Sunday Afternoon on the Porch.' His one major nonfiction book, One Hundred Over 100 Fulcrum Publishers, featured 100 American centenarians. For many years he was writer in residence at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in both poetry and fiction. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.</p> <p>Illustrator and children's author <strong>Tom Pohr</strong> grew up in the automobile-manufacturing town of Flint, Michigan. A self-taught artist whose love of animals is evident in his artwork, Pohrt has been interested in writing and drawing ever since he was a little boy. Despite his lack of guidance as a youngster, Pohrt has become a well-established illustrator, working with texts by authors such as Philippa Pierce, Julia Durango, Barry Lopez, Jim Heynen, Wendell Berry, and Jim Harrison as well as penning the text for two self-illustrated books featuring his original stories.'p'The precise, delicate lines of his drawings, coupled with his slightly moody, sepia-toned palette, suggest antique etchings, wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor in reviewing Pohrt''s work for Howard Norman''s'Trickster and the Fainting Birds the critic dubbing the picture book'beautifully designed and presented.In'Coyote Goes Walking''Pohrt retells four Native-American trickster tales, bringing his animal characters to life in what a Publishers Weekly contributor described as'warm, earth-toned watercolorsthat contain a'subtle humor.Described by a Publishers Weekly contributor as'one off-beat destination that''s definitely worth a visit, Pohrt''s quirky picture book Having a Wonderful Time finds a girl and a talking cat on a vacation where unexpected animal-sightings abound. The reviewer had special praise for the author Ilustrator''sconfidently deadpantext with its'dry, understated humor, but also commended the author''s characteristic detailed pen-and-ink drawings.</p>
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