Twelve-year-old Carl lives happily with his father. While their lifestyle is different than most, they live as simply as they can. They grow their own vegetables and own chickens and a couple of pigs. They dumpster dive for expired and ugly produce to feed the pigs and frequent garage sales for bargains. His father can fix just about anything, so he barters for items he needs, or he finds something that is broken down and fixes it for them to use. Life is good for Carl and his dad.
Until Carl gets himself something brand new, something he’s never had before. Carl gets a crush on a girl. Her name is Peggy, and Carl thinks that he will be invisible to her unless he can figure out how to adjust his lifestyle to include new clothes and maybe some shoes. But when his father finds him some bib overalls with lots of big pockets for a steal, Carl goes along with it even though they’re pink. And he goes along with the camo t-shirts, even though they’re way too big. And when he’s putting the bargain puppy food in the bin for them to feed to their pit bull rescue dog Carol. Carl gets an idea.
Instead of Carol’s usual dog food, there was a big bag of puppy food that had been marked down because there had been a hole in the bag. But as Carl was pouring the food out, he pulled out a pamphlet from the food. At first, he was going to throw it away, thinking it was a coupon or something. But it was actually a training pamphlet, to help puppy owners figure out how to modify their new pet’s behavior. And Carl wonders if those training ideas will work on his dad.
Carl and his best friend Pooder try to figure out how to modify the ideas of positive reinforcement to help stop Carl’s dad from shopping only at garage sales. He wants Peggy to see him, he wants to be lookatable. That is the goal. And the way to get there—training. Carl tries ignoring his dad when he drives by garage sales, but that doesn’t work as well as when he tries to distract his dad by playing ball or going to Dairy Queen. And when he gets desperate, he tries the squirt bottle.
The training starts slow, but things start to pick up. And after some successes and some wild adventures, Carl thinks that he’ finally starting to get through to his father, starting to change his behavior. And then he finds out that his dad has found his notebook, where he had been keeping notes on the whole training process.
Will he figure out a way to make things right with his dad? And will he figure out how to get Peggy to look at him, maybe even talk to him? Or will the whole summer be a complete loss?
How to Train Your Father is a clever look at that time of growing up when you want to love your parents but also want to change them into something less embarrassing. Three-time Newberry Honor winner Gary Paulsen has crafted a story that is funny and touching, warm and loving but with the slightly destructive energy of a growing boy and the misadventures that comes along with that.
I thought that How to Train Your Dad was a lot of fun. I loved the way Carl genuinely cares for his father and for the goofy friendship he and Pooder have. There are some gross moments that I think many 12-year-old boys will appreciate (and some girls), but honestly I could have done with just a little less (especially the frog). But it’s a well written book with a great story, so I hope it finds its way to lots of readers’ hearts.
Egalleys for How to Train Your Dad were provided by Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group through NetGalley, with many thanks.
