Several controversial questions arise [in Edgar Allan]. Should people adopt children of another race just to be flying their "liberal" flag? What are our responsibilities to the Black child who is adopted? And to the other children in the family? What are the consequences of our actions? Perhaps it was the author's purpose to raise these questions. If so, mission accomplished. However, Edgar Allan is a painful account of people's inhumanity to one another. (p. 911)

Margo Alexander Long, "The Interracial Family in Children's Literature" (copyright 1978 by the International Reading Association, Inc.; reprinted with permission of the International Reading Association and Margo Alexander Long), in The Reading Teacher, Vol. 31. No. 8, May, 1978, pp. 909-15.∗