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“A classic comic memoir”
The Life And Times Of
The Last Kid Picked
By David Benjamin
David Benjamin pays homage to the exuberance of countless untamed boys who grew up in Middle America at mid-century. Whether he’s stalking snakes in the bogs of Wisconsin, playing four-kid baseball with his bothersome little brother and two favorite cousins, leaping garbage cans for a beautiful little redheaded girl, or joining Chucky Dutcher for a movie marathon at the Erwin Theater, Benjamin is the kind of precocious ironist who would have found a sidekick in Huck Finn.
His tales and insights lyrically capture a precious moment in bygone American life, as Benjamin recalls the myriad scrapes, reckless escapades and wanderlust that once made childhood an exhilarating — or terrifying — adventure.
The book has been widely praised as a vivid, touching, often hilarious portrait of boyhood in a bygone era before “parental supervision.”
(Published by Random House in 2002, revised & re-published by Last Kid Books in 2020)
AWARDS: Wis. Library Ass’n: Notable Book, 2003. Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Finalist, Memoir (Historical/Legacy), 2020. NYC Big Book Awards, Distinguished Favorite, Best Cover Design, 2021.
The Life And Times Of The Last Kid Picked
By David Benjamin
Price: $20
What they're saying
“I relished every tadpole-scented word of David Benjamin’s comic conjuring of American kidhood. If you’re looking for a sassy update of Tom Sawyer with touches of Holden Caulfield and Russell Baker, The Last Kid Picked should be the first book bought.”
— Ron Powers, author, Mark Twain: A Life
“… a classic comic memoir. It has a wonderful combination of instantly recognizable truths and Tom Sawyer-like tall tales. Any former child, or present one, will enjoy this book.”
— James Fallows, The Atlantic
“... The book is pungent with vivid writing, perhaps nowhere more so than the account of what happens when he discovers that a washtub full of dying tadpoles on his back porch is turning into a foul kettle of fish. Faced with eliminating the resulting eye-watering, stomach- churning frog soup, he and his brother arrive at a neat solution that is, come to think of it, anything but that...
“... Benjamin reminds us that there are worst things than being the last kid picked—after all, there are some kids who are never picked at all. He makes us sad to realize that, in the name of safety and scheduling, kids have lost a great deal of the spontaneity and adventurousness of those not-so-long ago but so very, very different days.”
— Carole Goldberg, Hartford Courant
“David Benjamin’s funny, quirky, entirely engaging memoir of growing up in 1950s Wisconsin is a small treasure. It’s full of the big heartbreak of tiny lives, the salty give-and-take of being a kid on the threshold, making the team but losing the faith of sweet innocence.
“Do yourself a favor: pull up an arnchair and take a trip back there. You won’t regret the journey.”
—James Dodson, author, The Road to Somewhere
“Being the final choice of the playground’s ‘alpha males’ was not an indignity to him but a mark of the natural order. Harassment and humiliation for dropping pop flies just came with the territory, blows absorbed without resentment...
“... This was all part of what Benjamin considered the code of kid existence. Drawing inspiration from TV’s Paladin, of ‘Have Gun, Will Travel,’ young Benjamin pictured himself a loner on a mission, a noble outcast who never expects help or sympathy. This sounds like a scenario begging for both, but Benjamin’s tales of pickup ball or fetid-pond fishing are, for the most part, richly hilarious. He retains a little boy’s flair for spinning epics from anecdotes, and he applies to it an adult’s taste for irony. Don’t read this at bedtime. Your laughter might wake up the kids, and they have a big day tomorrow...”
— Chuck Twardy, Atlanta Journal-Constitution