Williams has always been more a preacher and entertainer than a serious novelist. If he deals with weighty matters, he does not deal with them weightily: He goes for Hollywood images, Hollywood sentiments and Hollywood's notion of "serious thought." I don't mind such things in novels for adults, though I don't exactly love them. In novels for children, sentimentality and preaching make me cross. "Tsuga's Children" is both: The publisher calls it a novel that "will be read with enchantment by adults and young people alike." (p. 13)

[The] language, emotions and surprising heroics recall Bomba, Boy of the Jungle, Raggedy Ann and the Hardy boys. The good, of course, are very very good, as mushy language insists….

The bad, on the other hand, are outrageously bad, though as in all schlock children's fiction they can be converted from bad to good, if the author feels like it, just...