I really liked The Great Brain. Feels like something I would hand loved in school.

A Catholic family, with very Lutheran names, living in a very Mormon town has various childhood experiences like getting the first indoor bathroom, a new immigrant moves to town, the Jewish peddler settles down and starts a shop, kids get lost in a cave, and they frame the new one-room-schoolhouse teacher for drinking on the job because he uses too much corprul punishment.

The Great Brain in the title refers to the he middle child always screming a way to make money.

It definitely feels like something they would not allow to be read in public schools now a days, between discussing faith, stereotypes and going through a number of ways for a kid to commit suicide I don't think it will make a required reading list.