The Sleator family was very creative, and freethinking, and their ways of handling the commonplaces of growing up may not be what many parents would like to have their own children imitate. Certainly, no adult would wish to suggest that it would be amusing or beneficial to refuse to be potty-trained until five years old. By the same token, children might prefer to have names of their own sometime before the age of two or three—being called "that other kid" by his father and "Newby" (short for "the new baby") only to eventually be given an altogether different name seems to have so traumatized Tycho that he became a physicist.

The pituh-plays are somewhat bothersome because they were jokes played on an unsuspecting public. The stupid telephone calls begging for money are as cruel as they are funny, and the children could actually be...