The rarest good books are about ordinary life today; one must admire, therefore, the expert hand behind The Bell Family—a particularly pleasant reminder of the narrative potentialities of rather poor (professional) families in rather large houses…. Readers have a choice of four nicely discriminated children, gifted or misunderstood, with which to identify themselves…. Our own choice would be the solid Virginia, who notes dispassionately that the games' captain and the head girl are not happily cast in the school play as the porcelain shepherd and shepherdess; and who did her good deed of minding the verger's baby with reluctance, because it had "a sneering face."

Naomi Lewis, "The Young Supernaturalist," in The New Statesman & Nation (© 1954 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. XLVIII, No. 1230, October 2, 1954, p. 404.∗