Raising 10 Kids on 35 Words or Less

In the mid-1950s, the ten Ryan kids lived on the edge of disaster and dispossession. Dad drank away his machine-shop wages, and his witty, resourceful wife, Evelyn, was too busy at home to take a job. So she started entering contests -- not today's sweepstakes but tests of literacy mettle -- churning out hundreds of rhyming couplets and mini-essays hailing the merits of soap and cat food. And by God, she won. Evelyn's entries earned her family food, clothing, and bikes. She won every appliance they owned, a car, and even, on the eve of eviction, enough money for the down payment on a new house! Evelyn's sixth child, Terry Ryan, wrote about her mom in a book titled 'Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How my Mother Raised 10 Kids on 35 Words or Less."

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