A review by ccaterer
King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography by Chris Crutcher

5.0

I have rarely raced through such a delightful and laugh-out-loud funny memoir as this one. I had the honor of hearing Chris speak at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference in New York this past weekend (January 25-26, 2012); he had all 1,000 of us in the room cupped in his hand from the beginning to the end of the speech. When I asked him to sign my book, I confessed to him that one minute I was crying about his stories as a therapist for abused children, and the next minute I was crying because his stories about his youth were just so funny. Most of this memoir about growing up in the 1950s in small-town Idaho fall into the funny camp; but occasionally they surprise you with a tragic twist. If you loved the movie A Christmas Story, you'll appreciate Crutcher's tales of torture at the hand of his big brother and his stumbles along the road to becoming the passionate and compassionate author of young adult fiction that he is today.