My ten-year-old nephew RDC2 recently read this and reported that he really identified with the main character and understood him. He has only just begun to read read, to read for pleasure, with fluency and comprehension, and this delights me, as Dicey was reassured when Maybeth, at eight or nine, read Green Eggs and Ham, late, but giggling and appreciating the silliness. The Collier brothers' book won a Newbery Honor (the afterward-like epilogue makes the deliberation behind its 1974 release obvious) for it, and Christopher Collier taught U.S. history at UConn while I was there, and the book is set in Connecticut, so RDC2's enjoying it was an excellent reason for me to skootch it up the queue.
I just recently read Johnny Tremain, Newbery Medalist, good story, good history, but Tim Meeker is more credible in his way because he doesn't just happen to fall in with the major players, as Tremain does, but lives his own life. Like Across Five Aprils, My Brother is a war story from an average child's point of view instead of from a soldier's.
Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt failed to blow my skirt up; and then, associating Lewis with Upton Sinclair because of their names and period when Lewis wasn't as obvious a reactionary as Sinclair, I decided the former was boring. Main Street changed my mind. Aside from an incredible because manipulative episode fairly late in the novel, the characters, events, and plot formed a riveting microcosm of American life.
A question: Why would someone give a pregnant woman Ben-Hur "as a preventive of future infant immorality"? Because it's "a tale of the Christ" or because, for this time (late 1910s), it would have been a diverting read during confinement?
First I thought that Carol was merely a female Babbitt, and she does have her babbitty strains but Lewis is not that lazy. Then, by period and discontent, the next obvious parallels for me to draw were to Dorothy Canfield's The Homemaker. Familial and economic differences again let Carol be her own self, but not the townsfolk. If they were not drawn by the same pencil, at least their authors used the same sharpener.
Preliminary googling turns up Lewis working as a janitor in Upton Sinclair's socialist commune and also knowing Jack London. I have confused Upton Sinclair Lewis since high school, but now at least I will remember that both of them were interesting.