The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less

A woman describes her mother Evelyn's struggles with poverty in the 1950s as she tries to build a happy home for her ten children, with the help of wit, poetry, and prose during the contest era of the 1950s and 1960s. 75,000 first printing. Adult/High School-While her sometimes abusive husband drank away a third of his weekly take-home pay, Evelyn Ryan kept her ever-growing family afloat by entering every contest she came across, beginning with Burma Shave roadside-sign jingles. In post-World War II America, money, appliances, food, excursions-anything you could think of-were routinely offered to the person who sent in the best jingle, essay, or poem, accompanied, of course, by the company's box-top or other product identification. Although she more often won prizes of products, such as a case of Almond Joy candy bars, Mrs. Ryan once won enough for a down payment on a house just as her family was being turned out of their two-bedroom rental house. That contest also won her a bicycle for her son. She entered so many contests, often several times under different forms of her name, that hardly a week went by without some prize being delivered by the postman. Charmingly written by one of her 10 children, this story is not only a chronicle of contesting, but also of her mother's irrepressible spirit. With a sense of humor that wouldn't quit, she found fun in whatever life sent her way, and passed that on to all her children who, despite the poverty they grew up in, lived and still live happy, useful lives. YAs who like family stories should love this winning account. Sydney Hausrath, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. This is the story of Evelyn Ryan, whose brood of ten children is not fully supported by her working husband, in part because of his perpetual drinking. Her sixth child, San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Ryan, here recounts how the family depended on her poems, jingles, and contest entries to make ends meet (and sometimes not even). When they must move, Evelyn wins $5000 for a down payment on a house; when their car breaks down, she wins a new one. In addition to her seemingly boundless flow of words is her positive outlook on life, one that her children inherited despite their subsistence on fish sticks and hand-me-down clothes. While readers will root for the family and admire Evelyn's strength and her way with words, in the end the story could have been improved with some judicious editing, especially of the repetitions of the jingles. Suitable for leisure collections. Gina Kaiser, Univ. of the Sciences in Philadelphia Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. The author's mother, Evelyn Ryan, was a small-town Ohio housewife in the nineteen-fifties who lived on the brink of dire poverty, thanks to a brood of ten kids and an ineffectual drunk of a husband. Since Evelyn couldn't work outside her home, she worked inside it, penning hundreds of product jingles and entering them in the national contests that drove the advertising industry of the day. And she didn't just enter contests—she won them, receiving several major appliances, innumerable small checks, and a handful of grand prizes ranging from a sports car to an international vacation. This plucky Middle American chronicle, starring an unsinkable, relentlessly resourceful mother and her Madison Avenue-style magic, succeeds on many levels—as a tale of family spirit triumphing over penury, as a history of mid-century American consumerism, and as a memoir about a woman who was both ahead of her time and unable to escape it. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker In the 1950s, Evelyn Ryan had an armload of children and a husband whose income barely kept the family clothed, let alone fed. Like many women in similar situations--mothers looking for extra money for their families--she entered contests: tell us why you like such-and-such a product in 25 words or less and win a refrigerator, a car, a watch, a trip, etc. Unlike most of her fellow "contesters," though, Ryan had a flare for writing and became a consistent winner: shopping sprees, appliances, cash, even a trip to Switzerland. Although her husband had the full-time job, it was Mrs. Ryan who, for a decade or so, used her winnings to buy the kids clothes, pay their dental bills, and keep the family from plummeting far below the poverty line. Ryan's daughter tells her mother's story in a memoir that is both an excellent chronicle of the contest-crazy '50s and '60s and a moving portrait of a clever, determined woman. Don't be surprised if this sleeper of a story generates tremendous word of mouth. David Pitt Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Patricia Cornwell Terry Ryan's story of her amazing, prize-winning mother is simply fabulous. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio is a wonderful snapshot of mid-twentieth-century America -- a heartwarming, marvelous story that deserves its place alongside the best nonfiction in m