A first person story, set in rural Vermont at the turn of the century, [Millie's Boy] is told with enough vigor and period detail to compensate for the heavy use of dialect and the rather pat ending…. Despite all [its] high drama, the story has vitality and a sure touch in characterization and dialogue, although the latter might be more effective were it not so larded with colloquialisms.

Peck starts the ten separate homespun reminiscences of his Vermont childhood [in Soup] with crafty attention getters such as "I don't think we ought to do it, Soup" or "'You're afraid.' 'No I'm not.' 'Then what are you standing there for?'" The mood ranges from rapture over the dewy September taste of a silver football valve to more earthbound reactions to Janice Ricker…. These nostalgic sketches all seem somehow closer to Tom Sawyer's time than to our own, but Peck clearly remembers how it was. (pp. 244-45)