The Story of a Bad Boy - A Story for Boys

Okay, so there's a funny story as to how I came to possess this book.  Nearly five years ago, I was traveling back from Kentucky and stopped at an antique mall in Ringgold, Georgia.  I stumbled across a book there called Bad Little Hannah, and I couldn't resist picking it up (in my geeky mind, thinking that perhaps it was a story of Hannah Gruen as a child LOL).  I read it, and while it was definitely a product of its time and not exactly exciting, it wasn't overly bad (no pun intended).  I read it, shelved it, and hadn't thought much more about it.  Until a few months back...

A friend of mine in Massachusetts (you know who you are!) called and was telling me about this bookstore he was in.  He had found a book in dust jacked for relatively cheap and wanted to know if I was interested in it.  The title was The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.  I laughed at the name, but as I thought about it, I remembered that Bad Little Hannah book and thought to myself, "Well, I have a book about a bad little girl, so why not one about a bad little boy?"  So, I had my friend pick it up for me.  I've had it on my reading shelf for a bit and finally got around to reading it.

 

The Story of a Bad Boy is the story of Tom Bailey (which is the author's name, begging the question of whether these are real adventures of the author, exaggerated tales from the author's youth, or just completely made up stories about a boy who happens to have the same name as the author), a young boy who is uprooted from his life in New Orleans in the 1800s and transported to live with his grandfather in the New England town of Rivermouth.  A quick online search reveals that the story is, indeed, partially autobiographical, with Rivermouth taking the place of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Aldrich apparently grew up.  Whether the events that take place in the book actually happened or not, well, that's anyone's guess.

Aldrich introduces his protagonist in an unusual way.  "This is the story of a bad boy. Well, not such a very bad, but a pretty bad boy; and I ought to know, for I am, or rather I was, that boy myself."  From the very first sentence of the very first chapter, the reader is challenged - is the story merely one told from first person point-of-views, or is the story an autobiographical telling of the author's life as a child.  In either event, the reader knows from the get-go (as if the title of the book was not sufficient enough to clue one in) that the protagonist is no saint.  But just how bad this boy is, well, that's something for the reader to decide along the way.  

As soon as Tom Bailey finds out his father is sending up to New England to be "educated," the first thing Tom does is to kick over "the little negro boy who happened to be standing by me at the moment." Now, one must remember, this story was written in the early 1900s and tells the tale of a boy who was growing up in the mid 1800s (although the time is never sufficiently stated in the story to make a determination of the exact year), so the reference to "negro" men and women and their status in society was a product of the time.  But his actions towards this small boy is only the beginning of the so-called bad things that Tom does over the course of 245 pages.  Despite his protests, Tom indeed does get moved up north.  Aboard the ship to Riversmouth, Tom strikes up a friendship with a man who goes only by Sailor Ben.  They part ways, never thinking their paths might cross again...

Tom settles into life in Riversmouth fairly quickly - and while he makes quick friends with a number of the boys at the local school, he ends up getting into trouble fairly quickly and pretty easily.  He gets into a fight with the school bully; he and the boys steal an old cart and wheel it into the huge bonfire in town; he and the boys build a winter fort out of snow and have a major snowball fight that turns rather violent, injuring several boys; he and the boys play a prank on a seamstress and shopkeeper, trying to play matchmaker with the two of them; he and the boys set up some old cannons to fire off in succession, scaring the entire town one night; he and the boys go into an ice cream parlor, order plenty of the frozen dessert to enjoy, and then take off without paying; and many other pranks and misdeeds!  Some of these things can easily be written off as the pranks of young teenage boys, while others were downright deadly!

And speaking of deadly - the story is not without dire consequences!  When the boys pull their money to purchase a small boat, they decide to take her out to one of the islands for an afternoon of fun - but that fun turns to despair when a storm hits, and one boy goes back to try and secure the boat, but ends up floating out into the stormy waters without any hope of rescue.  His body later turns up on the beach of Riversmouth, and Tom and his friends must face the death of one of their own.  And if that were not enough, Tom eventually receives word that his father has passed away, having contracted cholera and did not recover.  Thus, once his father delivered him to Riversmouth, Tom was never to see his father alive again.  These two heart-breaking incidents raise questions in the mind of the reader - did Tom merely act out because of his losses, or did he suffer losses as a consequence of his actions?

 
And just in case you think this book is completely different from all the mysteries that I read - there is one small mystery, which involves Sailor Ben, who unexpectedly shows back up in Riversmouth and decides to settle down in the town.  The reason he settles down may come as quite a surprise, but the revelation was actually foreshadowed early in the story when Tom first arrives in Riversmouth and becomes acquainted with everyone in his grandfather's house, known as The Nutter House.  Thus, even if it is not a series book (as I am normally apt to read), it did have a bit of mystery thrown in.

Now, something I found to be rather interesting while I was looking up some information on this book - The Story of a Bad Boy has been published by a number of different publishers over the years, and each publisher provided different covers for the book.  The particular edition I purchased was published by Grosset & Dunlap and features a cover by what appears to be Alfred Krenda - this is the first cover featured at the beginning of this blog post.  However, there were a number of other covers that I found, and I feature them here for your enjoyment (meaning if you decide to hunt down this book, you certainly have a number of options if you are to judge a book by its cover!).

 

Overall, the book had its moments, but it was not overly thrilling or engaging, at least for me.  This is more of a "time in the life of ..." tale, that has its ups and downs, its happy and sad moments, and its few moral lessons learned.  I guess reading stories like this reminds me that my true love is for mysteries, the supernatural, and the occasional sci-fi/fantasy.

Now I'm left to wonder - will I ever find any other "bad" books out there?

RATING:  5 small pieces of molasses candy out of 10 for reminding readers that not all bad boys are bad all the way through!

***If you are interested in knowing more about Bad Little Hannah, you can scroll back through my posts here to July 31, 2016 and see my blog posting that reviews that book!