"Rings Around Us" is a rollicking story from the moment Ernie's tight-fitting red dress brought an admiring "whee" from Chick Carey at a Greenwich Village party, until that same red dress on their teen-age daughter in a school play evoked his disapproval….

Sound familiar? It will to many parents, along with the entire book. The Carey family goes happily from crisis to crisis in the manner of most couples, only more so….

The book is in staccato dialogue, giving it pace, color, and the rhythm of a tuneful merry-go-round. Its characters are swiftly but never finely drawn and time is telescoped in a way that sometimes leaves the reader slightly startled by its lapse, but who cares when it is all such enjoyable reading.

Josephine Ripley, "About a Happy Family," in The Christian Science Monitor (reprinted by permission from The Christian Science Monitor; © 1956 The Christian Science Publishing Society...