SOURCE: "Salt and Gusto in New Tales by Edna Ferber," in The New York Times Book Review, April 17, 1927, p. 2.

In the following mixed review of Mother Knows Best, Kronenberger contends that all of the short stories are enjoyable, but some lack originality and realism.

For sheer readability few writers can equal Edna Ferber. She writes so smoothly and brightly, with so much gusto, with so wide-awake a style and so clever a selection of detail that she routs all that is commonplace and casts out all that is dull. Her variety is remarkable, as any one must agree who reads the eight short stories in Mother Knows Best. Either she or her publishers, by the way, choose to call these stories "novelettes." It is true that most of them contain sufficient material for novelettes and even novels, but it is inescapably true also that all of them are...