Of Knights and Lemon Fights

In this fictionalized memoir, author (or is it narrator?) Jeremy J. Standifird celebrates the details and the exaggerations of youth that mark every successful-which is to say, harrowing, ridiculous, and beautiful-childhood.

A collection of memories that bubbles to the surface as Standifird watches a paunchy, balding man attempt to help a would-be diva in too much makeup, Of Knights and Lemon Fights presents a vision of childhood as lived and experienced by children. It's a vison extremely appealing to those of us ex-children who masquerade as adults.

Full of truth and plenty of stretching of the truth, the book follows the narrator from the ages of five to thirteen as he confronts the realities of love, loss, and the other wonderful and terrible parts of growing up.

As the narrator remembers his fear of leaving elementary school for the uncertain future of junior high, discussing why Barbie dolls should have skin with his cousin, and dealing with unexpected family tragedy, readers will recall the agony and the ecstasy of their own childhoods-and maybe spend a little time poking around the recesses of their own memories.