[Zilpha Snyder] attempts an overview of her troubled nation-states [in "Until the Celebration"]. But she doesn't have the zoom lens, or even an intercom. We seem to be reading the minutes of countless meetings, running down the pages of Kindar and Erdling phone books, rather than witnessing events. The air is befogged. We catch only occasional glimpses of stately figures with veiled faces moving from limb to limb before the mist wraps them again in obscurity. One wants to grab the tree and shake it, or pick up the tool-of-violence and leap from branch to branch, firing in the air.

Jane Langton, "Children's Books: 'Until the Celebration'," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1977 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), May 8, 1977, p. 41.