A most unusual book is Kin Platt's Sinbad and Me …, a long and lively story told by its 12-year-old hero, Steve. While his parents are out of town, Steve and Sinbad, his English bulldog, disrupt the peace and harmony of Hampton, New Jersey, unravel an 18th-century mystery, find a hidden million-dollar treasure, outwit some pretty unsavory underworld characters, and find Big Nick Murdock, who disappeared years before when his floating gambling casino sank. Steve puzzles out riddles on tombstones and ciphers in a pirate's cave to solve much of the mystery, and his precocious knowledge of architecture and old houses does the rest. The whole story is outrageously illogical, long and rambling, and refreshingly funny.

Sarah Law Kennerly, in her review of "Sinbad and Me," in School Library Journal, an appendix to Library Journal (reprinted from the December, 1966 issue of School Library Journal, published by R. R. Bowker...