"In the Middle of the Night," the best story here in Philippa Pearce's ["What the Neighbours Did and Other Stories,"] is very funny…. [It] is as finely structured as music; at the last note, sighing pleasurably, you wish for nothing more: a distinct achievement. On the other hand, some of these stories are often oddly unsatisfactory. The tone varies, of course. Two are first person, some slangy, others formal or detached or both. But all have Miss Pearce's strong sense of place, her wit and slyness of observation (adding, incidentally, to her special gallery of obstinate old men). Some may not be children's stories at all. The title one, for instance, shows a small, awful, adult wasteland. The best are too good to be confined to children anyway.

A few, inevitably, work less well—"Lucky Boy" perhaps or "The Great Blackberry Pick"—though the human observations are as...