[Cress Delahanty] is the chronicle of an American family—father, mother, and daughter…. The heroine, Cress, is entering high school at the age of twelve when the story begins and she is sixteen when it closes…. Cress, who is flat as a board and inconspicuous as a freshman, is determined to be noticed. What she says and does soon has the school talking about "that crazy kid," and her reputation as a comedian takes a long time to live down.

Her true awakening is a more subtle story, and it is this half-shared, half-private life which Miss West has depicted with such delightful fidelity …; she emerges as a most attractive person. Her parents are well drawn and identifiable, but it is Cress herself, independent and unpredictable, who carries the book. Not since Booth Tarkington has a writer penetrated so surely and so sunnily into the adolescent world.

Edward...