Happiness is a found puppy.

If you have ever loved a dog you will understand this book. Jerry and Rachel Pye have the great good fortune to obtain the smartest puppy in the whole town, but somebody else is jealous and dognaps poor Ginger. The search for their puppy takes the children all over town. It consumes considerable resources of thought and imagination. It takes months.

During this time we meet the citizens of the little town of Cranbury and see a post-war way of life almost as unfamiliar to today's children as that found in the previous century. (When I first read this book as a child, ten years after GINGER PYE was published, the world had already changed drastically from the one so well portrayed here.) Not only the circumstances of daily living have substantially altered: children's access to television drama has made it nearly impossible to believe so simple a mystery could go unsolved for so long in this day and age. Yet in the context of Cranbury half a century ago the children do not appear stupid, even as the reader knows what happened all along.

We understand and sympathize with Jerry's and Rachel's thoughts and feelings; we are charmed by their three-year-old Uncle Bennie; and we rejoice with all of the characters, especially Ginger, at the perfect, yet sorrowful, ending to the story. The essentials of life do not change much, even if the circumstances do.

This book is for children reading at about a third- or fourth-grade level, and younger ones would probably enjoy listening to it. Eleanor Estes' illustrations are primitive yet delightful as always. A sequel, PINKY PYE, was long on charm but short on plot. (THE SLEEPING GIANT is undoubtedly set in Cranbury; I have never been able to locate it.) The Moffatt books are for thoughtful children only; THE ALLEY still more so. THE WITCH FAMILY is for everybody!