[The charm of "The Small Rain"] is its naturalness as a record of childhood and youth….

Miss L'Engle tells the story straightforwardly, without sentimentality, but with quick insight into the keen and contradictory emotions of the years when a girl is struggling to find out what she is and what she wants. In this her picture of the girls at boarding school is notable….

"The Small Rain" is in no way the too common story of unhappy and misunderstood childhood which many novelists seem impelled to write. Miss L'Engle gives you Katherine and her family and friends with an objectivity that makes you respect and like them as individuals. The setting and the events of the story are in themselves interesting. Its distinction, however, arises from the clarity and naturalness with which it recaptures the protean course of youth, reminding you that what has happened by age twenty...