Herbie lives with his parents and older sister in an apartment in the working class East Bronx, and his father is a partner in an ice business, an essential in the days before refrigerators had arrived in households. It is 1928, and the horrors of The Great Depression, World War II and The Holocaust are yet to come. In that respect it is an innocent era, and boys Herbie's age enjoy a visit to the corner soda fountain for a "frap" (an ice-cream soda), or to buy the latest comic book.
Herbie has a crush on his 7th-grade teacher, and then on a girl in his class, who becomes his girlfriend, in the most innocent sense of the word. Unlike some of his classmates, he is not an athlete, and not interested in sports. He would much rather spend his time reading. He is stout, and some of his classmates torment him at times for it.
Herbie, his sister, his girlfriend, and his cousin, along with his nemesis, the ultra-athletic son of his father's partner, end up spending the summer at a sleep-away camp in the mountains, where many of his escapades are based, and where he misses his parents, but also pays little attention to regularly writing to them.
This gentle novel feels as though it might be somewhat autobiographical of the author's own childhood. There are intimations that Herbie may someday go far in life, but as an eleven-year-old, he has more immediate concerns – and worries, though all comes out well in the end.
I enjoyed this book immensely, and as my own father was born in 1917, the same year as Herbie, I'm sure he had some similar experiences in his Philadelphia childhood, some of which I heard about, but many he most likely stored in his memory, and savored over time.
