Self-Published Book Review: “My Nana Was a Free-Range Kid”

Book reviews are a great way for self-publishing authors to gain exposure. After all, how can someone buy your book if he or she doesn’t know it exists? Paired with other elements of your book promotion strategy, requesting reviews is a great way to get people talking about what you’ve written.

When we read good reviews, we definitely like to share them. It gives the author a few (permanent) moments of fame and allows us to let the community know about a great book. Here’s this week’s book review:

My Nana Was a Free-Range Kid by NAncy Peek Youngdahl

My Nana Was a Free-Range Kid

by Nancy Peek Youngdahl

ISBN: 9781478704928

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My Nana was an Outrageously Mischievous kid. In the 1940s and ’50s, children were allowed to run free, play outside, and use their imaginations-without parents constantly hovering over them and fearing for their safety. In her own small town in North Carolina-with very little traffic, and neighbors who actually knew each other-Nana was no exception to the free-range kid phenomenon. But as an outrageously mischievous child that was left to her own devices, she sure got into some amazing and hilarious adventures. It was a glorious time to be a child! Both of Nana’s parents worked, so she and her brother were often unsupervised. They wreaked havoc most of the time, thus living an exciting childhood. Nana’s stories-told to her great-grandchildren-are all true. She relates how her family and neighbors survived in spite of her and is quick to let her great-grandchildren know what not to do. As she says, if she had lived as a child today, she’d probably be locked up in a juvenile home!

* courtesy of Amazon.com

Featured Review

Her Nana was a lot like me when I was young. I climbed trees, hung out by the creek, rode my bicycle, played in the barn and did anything I could to keep from being bored. No one worried about me. Life was different then.

The author shared a copy of this book with me for review (thank you). It has been published and you can grab a copy now.

Nana climbed trees and hung from them mimicking the trapeze artists in the circus. When she falls and knocks all the breath out of her, her brother helps her recover.

They also pretended her brother was a lion tamer and she was a lion, but the platform collapsed.

The worst thing they did was make a small fire and cook marshmallows. They thought they put the fire out, but it restarted and burnt the woods. Never play with fire!

Nana has even more adventures you can read about. Do you have a free range kid in your household?

– Reviewed by Jo Ann Hakola on The Book Faerie

Other Reviews

Non-Fiction recounts of the author’s free-range childhood in the 1940s & 50s, and the amazing and hilarious adventures initiated with my younger brother. The author lived an active childhood and wreaked havoc all around her neighborhood. The beautiful illustrations in my book could tell the stories without a printed word. This book is narrated by the author’s great-granddaughter who declares over and over her love for her grandparents and how important they are in her life. Her Nana’s yarns tie in many different lessons in what “not to do” and the themes throughout the book will surely hold imaginations long beyond the last page. Today’s child needs to know that family history is a very valuable commodity and should never be forgotten.

– reviewed on bookreviewbuzz

The events shared by “Nana” in this book will open opportunities for grandparents to relate stories about their own childhood.

“My Nana Was A Free-Range Kid” by Nancy Peek Youngdahl is a fun children’s book. The term “free range” brings to mind wide-open spaces and living in nature, and spending hours soaking in the sunlight, going inside only when forced to by the weather. And this is the way the “Nana” in this story was raised – free to run around outside all day and evening, only coming back into the house for meals or bedtime. In this book, “Nana” tells her grandchildren stories about things that happened to her as a child.

I am 72 now, and could relate to every incident described in the book, because it mirrored events in my own childhood. Like “Nana,” I went to the circus every summer, I played outside all day every day, I hung wet clothes out on the clothesline with my mother, I roasted marshmallows over a campfire with my dad, and I pretended to be sick so I could skip school now and then. But a big difference I noticed between “Nana’s” early life and the lives of children today was that she was always hanging out with her brother, Henry, or the neighbor Kenny, playing games outside. Too many children today play alone all day, in the house often with the shades closed, completely absorbed with their electronic devices or TV.

I think this book would work best when read by a grandparent to the child, rather than leaving a child on his own to read it, as the events shared by “Nana” will easily lend themselves to opportunities for grandparents to relate stories about their own childhoods. I see this book as good way to connect generations, as they explore similarities and differences in the way their grandparents entertained themselves “back in the day” and what children find to do for fun today.

– reviewed by Linda Ratcliff on Amazon

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Self Publishing Advisor