Freaky Friday makes no pretense of being a work of great social significance.

The Andrews family lives a comfortable and affluent life with father employed in advertising, mother not working outside the home, and both children in private school. This is the Manhattan of E. B. White's Stuart Little, of Elizabeth Enright's The Saturdays, and of E. L. Konigsberg's From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. There are no characters from minority backgrounds, no working class characters except the Andrews' German cleaning woman, no poor people. In fact, no social issues are raised at all, except perhaps that Mrs. Schmauss the cleaning woman's remarks about "colored" people offend Annabel nearly as much as her gin drinking.

Although it is difficult to see how anyone could be seriously bothered by the social attitudes of this book, some young readers might find it hard to relate...