A Little Potato and Hard to Peel

by David Harrell

Overview

“We were called The Little Potatoes and Hard to Peel . . . we were smaller than the other kids and maybe not as talented, but we always played with our hearts. So, it didn’t matter if we won or lost, we never got down, because we knew on the inside . . . we were tuff and hard to peel.”

This is how David's grandfather, Pop Pop, begins a legendary story about his little league baseball team during a family reunion in Kentucky, along the winding Ohio River. As the tale unravels, David starts to think Pop Pop might be teaching him more than just the rules of baseball. Back home in Georgia, David is embarking on a new adventure as he begins middle school, a time of exciting changes that he will navigate single-handedly. David was born without his right hand, a “glitch” that allows him to adapt differently to all experiences. Soon, he finds himself wondering if he can follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and join his little league all-star team with one mitt. Full of vulnerability and despair, humor and hope, we learn the universal power of his grandfather’s story as it echoes in David’s life, reminding us to not let challenges, obstacles, and perceived limitations peel away the core of our humanity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781645434054
Publisher:	Mascot Kids
Publication date:	03/04/2025
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

David Harrell is an actor, writer, speaker, and disability advocate. In 2021, he was honored by the Casting Society of America as one of the Top 20 Actors from underrepresented populations. Television credits include The Gilded Age, FBI: Most Wanted, The Code, Bull, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. On stage, he has performed Off-Broadway and regionally across the country. His award-winning solo plays A Little Potato and Hard to Peel and The Boy Who Would Be Captain Hook continue to entertain audiences of all ages. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the New Jersey Governor’s Awards for Arts in Education in 2019. He was nominated in 2010 for a New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Solo Performance and won the 2014 Journalist Choice Award for his work in a solo play festival in Pärnu, Estonia. He currently lives in Savannah, Georgia with his family.

Editorial Reviews

2025-02-05
A dramatized memoir of a young boy overcoming a disability.

In his debut book, Harrell presents a lightly fictionalized version of his own childhood, reassuring his readers that “all the stories that make up this story come from a place of truth.” David Harrell is born with a limb difference—his right arm ends in a nub with little protrusions where his fingers should be. The young David has an unbeatably sunny disposition, and he and his friends joke and clown around about everything, including his arm. But in the wake of what he calls “the great cafeteria kerfuffle,” in which he asks a girl to go steady with him and she walks away (presumably because of his arm), his parents take him to the hospital. He is given a prosthetic myoelectric arm, with sensors that align with his muscles in order to respond to his commands. He is initially uncomfortable, naturally; “I look in the mirror by the bathroom to see how realistic it looks,” Harrell writes. “Will this work? Will this make me normal enough for a girl to want to be my girlfriend?” When he returns to school, his friends think his “Luke Skywalker hand” is cool, and with his renewed self-confidence he runs for student council, weathers the death of his beloved grandfather, and throws himself into sports. Harrell conveys his simple tale with touching fidelity to the worldview and priorities of a young boy who’s nervous around girls and sometimes feels anguished by self-doubt (“I am scared I will break the paper cup with the punch if I try to hold it,” he thinks at one point. “God, I wish I could have two hands right now”). The book’s message of can-do optimism, exemplified by David’s determination not to let adversity “peel away the core of who we are,” is ultimately moving.

A funny and touching fictionalized true story of a boy overcoming obstacles.

Kirkus Reviews