Chimes From A Jester’s Bells

Robert Jones Burdette's collection opens with a devilishly clever premise: a send-up of Jacob Abbott's beloved 19th-century Rollo books, those earnest instructional tales meant to teach children virtue and proper conduct. Here, however, the targets are not children but their parents. Mr. Holliday storms through these pages convinced he possesses divine wisdom on child-rearing, and his spectacular failures to mold young Rollo into a model of virtue become a merciless, hilarious indictment of parental pomposity. The humor cuts both ways, exposing the absurdity of grown-ups who demand perfection while modeling chaos. The companion sketches that follow range from wickedly funny to genuinely moving, with occasional forays into the genuinely unhinged. This is Victorian-era satire at its most delightful: smart enough to skewer American domestic piety while remaining warm enough to celebrate the beautiful disaster of family life.