Reviewed by Gisela Dixon for Readers' Favorite

Papa and Mama Said: Full of Dare County Folklore by Lucinda Gallop Baum is a non-fiction memoir or autobiography about the life and experiences of Lucinda growing up in the '30s and '40s of rural America. Papa and Mama Said is written in a fairly sequential manner with events following one after another over the course of a lifetime. The story starts off with Lucinda’s childhood and early years in Dare County, North Carolina. In it, Lucinda describes her parents, their backgrounds, families, the geographical and cultural aspect of the land and places they lived in, including their day to day life such as the food they ate, the love and relationships between the siblings, making a living off the land, celebration of holidays and festivals with friends and families, the challenges and hardships, as well as the joys and happy times of childhood. There are also numerous photographs throughout the book that put the people in this story into context.

I enjoyed reading Papa and Mama Said: Full of Dare County Folklore. In it, we get a glimpse of how life used to be almost a hundred years ago. Although this is relevant to America and American life, it is also applicable to how life used to be everywhere around the world—a lot slower, natural, and with much less dependence on machines. As a result, family and community ties were more important. And this fact is brought out well in this book. I liked reading about the “old way” of living and doing things such as all the different ways pig meat was used, for example. This is a good book for anyone who likes reading about history or about older customs and ways of living that are fast dying out.