The subtitle of this self laudatory autobiography is “How One Man Built a Movement to Save Play.” In one sense, the book is an extended begging letter for Kaboom, the organization Hammond founded. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to Kaboom.
The climax of Kaboom’s community organization efforts comes when volunteers from elsewhere and the people from a neighborhood which has no safe playground build a playground in a single day. The neighborhood may be a single large apartment building. All Kaboom’s efforts go to low income neighborhoods where people on welfare or receiving other forms of charitable assistance tend to be grouped.
Building up to this climax involves many meetings by and with the people. Collecting enough contributions to buy the equipment from or through Kaboom also takes time. The children themselves design the playground. The goal is a safe place where the children can engage in unsupervised play, a laudable goal since supervised play tends to prevent kids from learning many valuable lessons.
I didn’t read the whole book, but what I did sounded as though Kaboom does little follow-up. Once the playground is built, it’s turned over to the local people to insure its safety and maintain it.
The first two pages suggested to me that Hammond might have been turned on to the overpopulation problem and helping women and/or men use birth control more successfully. His large family ended in a facility called Moosehead in Illinois. Moose, a competitor of the Elks, finances Moosehead.
Hammond did almost all his growing up in Moosehead. He even mentions he would like to go back to it as an employee or director of the facility.
By all means read this book if you enjoy Horatio Alger stories. You may even want to contribute to Hammond’s Kaboom.