According to Punkin Book

2.5 stars & 3/10 hearts. Frankly, I think this is the most boring of all the Sugar Creek Gang books and it also doesn't fit in very well. And it skitters all over the place, which makes it very confusing. I'm pretty sure Middle-Sized Jim doesn't come up again, or at least not in the books I've read. (There are mentions of boys swimming together unclothed.) The last two or three chapters get interesting enough though, and the "several rows of potaoes" is a hilarious theme!

*I read the Moody Press abridged version, but I have read some of the original copies of this series and I much prefer those, as being more vintage.*

A Favourite Humorous Quote: "...my folks ... had told me I could go over to Poetry's house ... just as soon as I had finished hoeing a few rows of potatoes. Dad hadn't said how many rows, so I asked him, and he said, 'Let your conscience be your guide. But there are several that ought to be done.'
"My conscience wasn't sure how to be a guide to a boy that didn't like to hoe potatoes. So I thought I ought to know exactly how many 'several' was and maybe that would help. So ... I looked up the word in our brand-new dictionary, and it said, 'Indefinite: more than one or two, but not many.' ...
"Anyway, just to be sure I'd hoed several, I actually hoed three, which was more than one or two but wasn't many."