It's too bad we don't reserve a special set of adjectives for books that really are commendable—witty, original, entertaining, well-plotted and well-wrought; as it is, copywriters … have so diluted those terms that when the genuine article [like "A Billion for Boris"] comes along it's like crying wolf. Wolf!…

While I'm not saying this is "Eloise" of the seventies, "A Billion for Boris" does assume an urban and sophisticated frame of reference on the part of the reader, and it evokes so much New York City local color … that it really is the perfect New York City book.

Ah, but its smart high-school repartee is so snappy (and so true!) it ought to delight the cognoscenti and their eccentric, rotten-housekeeper mothers from coast to coast. (p. 8)

Alix Nelson, in The New York Times Book Review (© 1974 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), November 24, 1974.

American children are...