Porch Lies: Tales of Slicksters, Tricksters, and Other Wily Characters

Name: Porch Lies: Tales of Slicksters, Tricksters, and Other Wily Characters
Author: Patricia C. McKissack
Illustrator: Andre Carrilho
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade Books
Publisher City: New York, New York
Publication Date: 2006
ISBN:0-375-83619-5

Summary
Porch Lies: Tales of Slicksters, Tricksters, and Other Wily Characters is a collection of tales Porch lies are tales of humor and exaggeration told to listeners of all ages gathered together on the porch, according to McKissack. Stories involved in this bunch of Porch Lies are a face-to-face encounter with the King of the Ghosts, an encounter where an old grandmother out tricks Jesse James, and the state fair where the granddaddy of all lies is told by saying "not much of nothing."
The reader learns how Cake Norris has died at least 27 times, but somehow is still walking around Earth. Each tale will leave the reader laughing, even the creepy "Earth Bone and King of the Ghosts."

Review
Porch Lies is a compilations of stories based on what author Patricia McKissack heard on the front porch of her grandmother's house. McKissack added her own character names and expanded the outlandishness of the tales.

Each character telling the story is a bit of a stereotype, but in a good way. They are great storytellers who enthral the reader, and they are willing to bend the truth of the story for a great laugh or for spine-tingling effects. Most stories take place in the depression years in the South. Few white people enter into the stories, but they tend to be rich,older ladies, Klansmen, or former slave owners. In "Aunt Gran and The Outlaws" Frank and Jesse James enter the tales for a white version of the "slickster" tales.

Each tale starts off with a little bit of background about the tale. The background information is written in italics to set it off from the rest of the tale. Sometimes the background is just as funny as the story, like in "Change." The storyteller is normally an older person telling a story of their youth. Each tale is also dedicated to a person or people who have somehow inspired the story, or have told the story before.

"A Grave Situation" is a story about a rich, older white woman and her African-American driver. It has shades of "Driving Miss Daisy." The story is told from the viewpoint of a 10-year-old servant girl who had the utmost faith in the slickster character. Mis. Crickett Thompson had a driver named Lincoln "Link" Murphy who was a known slickster or "sneasal". Link walks a fine line between right and wrong, and Mis. Cricket lets him get away with his shenanigans. When Mis. Crickett dies her requests were promptly denied by her lawyer, and it is Link who comes to save the day. The story reads well, and any school teacher or Librarian should read this story aloud to their classes. The reader is sucked into the tale wondering just what Link is going to do next. The naivete of the young Beatrice Perriman is refreshing and elementary students will identify with her ability to see the good in Link Murphy.

Carrilho's illustrations are perfect for the African-America tales. The starkness of the black and white illustrations mirrors the oldness of the tales. One would believe they are looking at an old black and white television set as they read.

Professional Reviews

From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up–These 10 literate stories make for great leisure listening and knowing chuckles. Pete Bruce flatters a baker out of a coconut cream pie and a quart of milk; Mingo may or may not have anything smaller than a 100-dollar bill to pay his bills; Frank and Jesse James, or the Howard boys, help an old woman against the KKK-ish Knights of the White Gardenia; and Cake Norris wakes up dead one day–again. Carrilhos eerie black-and-white illustrations, dramatically off-balance, lit by moonlight, and elongated like nightmares, are well-matched with the stories. The tales are variously narrated by boys and girls, even though the authors preface seems to set readers up for a single, female narrator in the persona of McKissack herself. They contain the essence of truth but are fiction from beginning to end, an amalgam of old stories, characters, jokes, setups, and motifs. As such, they have no provenance. Still, it would have helped readers unfamiliar with African-American history to have an authors note helping separate the truth of these lies that allude to Depression-era African-American and Southern traditions. That aside, they're great fun to read aloud and the tricksters, sharpies, slicksters, and outlaws wink knowingly at the child narrators, and at us foolish humans.–Susan Hepler, formerly at Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Gr. 3-5. Like McKissack's award-winning The Dark Thirty (1992), the nine original tales in this uproarious collection draw on African American oral tradition and blend history and legend with sly humor, creepy horror, villainous characters, and wild farce. McKissack based the stories on those she heard as a child while sitting on her grandparents' porch; now she is passing them on to her grandchildren. Without using dialect, her intimate folk idiom celebrates the storytelling among friends, neighbors, and family as much as the stories themselves. "Some folk believe the story; some don't. You decide for yourself." Is the weaselly gravedigger going to steal a corpse's jewelry, or does he know the woman is really still alive? Can bespectacled Aunt Gran outwit the notorious outlaw Jesse James? In black and white, Carrilho's full-page illustrations--part cartoon, part portrait in silhouette--combine realistic characters with scary monsters. History is always in the background (runaway slaves, segregation cruelty, white-robed Klansmen), and in surprising twists and turns that are true to trickster tradition, the weak and exploited beat powerful oppressors with the best lies ever told. Great for sharing, on the porch and in the classroom. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Connections

Students can write their own Porch Lies.
Have students look up Porch Lies in other literature and compare the story-telling styles.
Students can research Frank & Jesse James and Web Hollow to see if there is a grain of truth in the story "Aunt Gran and the Outlaws."