Philippa Pearce's book of short stories, What the Neighbours Did, confirms her, if confirmation were needed, as the most important writer for children at the present. It is exceptionally finely written and conceived—indeed it is hard to think of another children's book this year that could be considered in the same class. Such high claims must be insisted on partly because the book seems to make none for itself. It is a collection of stories written over a dozen years or so, in consistently understated and low-keyed tones, describing the quiet lives of country children. Yet its impact is the greater because Philippa Pearce has deliberately dispensed with all the usual props of children's fiction—whimsy, fantasy, magic, talking toys or animals, the looking-glass world of the past. Instead she has limited herself to the severest realism. The unlikeliest event in the volume is Still Jim's return...