MCBROOM TELLS A LIE
by Sid Fleischman & illustrated by Walter Lorraine
McBroom starts out with a couple of typical whoppers which he represents as "the genuine truth," and all through this one the tall tales fly as thick and fast as the dust storm that has the local rodents digging their holes in the air. The McBrooms (Willjillhesterchesterpeterpollytim tommarylarryandlittleclarinda as well as their parents) end up outwitting shyster neighbor Heck Jones (who's after their farm and is confident that he has set them an impossible task) by growing tomatoes at night by the light of fireflies which the kids fetch in their frozen sunlight-powered popcorn-mobile—all fittingly pictured in Lorraine's rattletrap sketches. It might come as a disappointment that McBroom's acknowledged lie turns out to be a common garden-variety exaggeration—but with truths like these, who needs fiction?