I love this story. It portrays the indomitable spirit and vigor of youth. It tells of a young boy who applied for a paper route and got rejected because all the routes were taken but was given the job of selling newspapers in the streets. He went on to sell all his papers and attracted steady customers. One day he met a man who took his picture and told him it was for a chamber of commerce project. In the end the book describes the boy seeing a newly installed bronze statue in the park honoring the spirit of the youth. It was from the 1963 chamber of commerce. I wonder if the book was based on a true story. I also wonder if the boy realized that it was him.
The story portrays a boy leading an ordinary life, poor but happy. He went on to get a job, help his single-parent mom and his siblings, go swimming, play with his friends, and loiter around his community. It’s amazing how his simple existence can have so much meaning well beyond what he himself may have realized and how such a seemingly ordinary life can be a symbol of hope that can touch so many lives for posterity, such symbol of hope forever immortalized in a bronze statue.
It was also a time when mobile technology was not yet evident, so it’s nice to read about young people playing outside and having fun. A sadder observation, though, is that the family unit had started changing, with the increasing number of single-parent households, as early as 1963, but then maybe having one parent is better than two who constantly argue, traumatizing the kids. There are so many good values that can be taken from this story, and it brings us back to a time when life was simpler and, for some, better.