THE CARNY KID: SURVIVAL OF A YOUNG THIEF

KENNETH KAHN, Pendant Press, $19.95, hardcover, (224p)

ISBN: 0-9761115-0-0

REVIEW By Mary Hallock, Bowker

This deeply moving and inspiring book candidly shares eminent Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Kenny Kahn’s experiences of growing up as a carny‚ kid, traveling the carnival circuit and surviving the squalor of one of L.A.’s worst ghettos during the 1940s and 1950s. Dedicated to everyone who has had to contend with delinquent parents, this powerful memoir details the story of a young child’s remarkable triumph over appalling adversities.

Born to two accomplished, small-time carnival thieves who later become heroin addicts-cum-peddlers, Kahn’s arrival is not greeted with much rejoicing by his parents. Left to fend for himself, Kahn even has to take on the responsibility of tending to his brother who is born three-and-a-half years later. At the tender age of five, Kahn gets his first job selling newspapers; and when the family hits the road during summer, he is initiated into the carnival world‚s inside secrets, which help him fleece suckers at carnivals and earn real money.

When Kahn is 12 years old, his family is evicted from a peaceful middle-class neighborhood for falling behind on the rent and moves into a cockroach-infested apartment in the L.A. County Housing Projects. As the only Jewish teenager in an area dominated by tough Mexican and African American gangs and with no friends, heroin junkies for parents, a shooting-gallery for a home, and living in constant fear of the gangs, his school becomes an island of sanity. Motivated by his enthusiastic social studies teacher, he realizes that education is the only way to overcome his hardships. During high school when he is struck with polio, his fierce determination and dauntless optimism not only see him through it but also enable him to play football games. Subsequently, when he graduates as the Boy of the Year in 1958, it spells the end of his years in the projects and marks the beginning of a bright, new future.

Kahn’s poignant account is unassuming and without any traces of self-pity. Besides motivating youth, his compulsively readable memoir, which reads like a deftly written work of fiction, will inspire a wide audience. It includes several photographs of Kahn’s childhood. Readers will eagerly await his next book, which will recount his exciting law school years at Berkeley in the 1960s.