Those Smith kids

(from the book jacket) "The Smith kids are three young hellions named Skip,16,Toby, 13 and Brat, 11. Brat tells their story in a completely uninhibited style. Their tangled lives involve a ferret who gets loose in a five & ten and starts a five-alarm riot; a rendition of the Gettysburg address inextricably wedded to a milking cow; the runaways of a black pony named Cherry Pie" and more. "In spite of the truly awesome damage they wreak on their quite Connecticut village, the Smith kids aren't really 'bad.' As their father, who is the 'silent hero' of the book is so often forced to explain, they start with a good idea, but they don't take all the possibilities and probabilities into consideration."