How to Build a Tin Canoe

July 15, 2005
White delivers an excellent reading of his autobiography in a Southern accent that listeners may find difficult to understand at first. Within a few minutes, the charm and humor of his recollections of growing up on the coastal flats of Georgia in the 1950s, developing into a lifelong sailor and boat-builder, his weighing and establishing of life's priorities, begin to come through. Though not needed for following White's pursuit of the joy in life, a passing acquaintance with marine engines, outboard motors, and Atlantic coastal flora and fauna and the terminologies of boat-building, woodworking, fishing, or sailing will aid the listener's appreciation of parts of his narrative. Charming, yes, but also full of adult situations with a smattering of adult language. Recommended for general nonfiction or biography collections. -Cliff Glaviano, Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2003
Most readers will never need to build their own boat, tin or otherwise, but this memoir rarely fails to delight and sometimes even informs. White passes his days building boats and his nights writing for publications like Wooden Boat and Messing About in Boats--not surprisingly, there's plenty of talk of keels, sterns, tumblehomes and beam ratios here. Mixed in are his observations on how television rots children's minds, and the ways in which the Enron scandal resembles cannibalism in the Pre-Columbian Antilles. Like many skilled storytellers, White wanders a bit. His childhood, which he spent building boats, getting into trouble and exploring the South's swamps and ponds, resembles his adult life, with the latter boasting deeper and more treacherous waters. In the chapter"King Tut," for example, White tires while waiting for his tugboat to clear the Mississippi's locks and decides to swim across the river to see a King Tut exhibit at the Sugar Bowl. After nearly being run over by an oil barge and losing all of his clothes, he does. There's no telling, of course, how much fact there is to these tales. According to the book's disclaimer,"none of these stories is true... not a single word."