Meet the Moffats: "Sylvie was upstairs saying her lines for the play at the Town Hall. Joey had gone bicycling up Shingle Hill, Rufus was playing marbles down the street, and Mama was busy peeling apples. There wasn't anyone to play with, so Janey picked up her doll, Hildegarde, stuck her in her knitting bag, and went out to sit on the hitching post in front of the house." That is how the first chapter begins—before it ends the Moffats and the reader are friends.

To live in Cranbury on New Dollar Street, to have a mother who could make both ends just meet and have fun doing it, to be one of a family of four children (four is such a handy number—you can divide things evenly)—all this spelled a rich, adventure-studded existence to the Moffats.

Joey could do practically everything well except dance, but dancing brought him his brief moment of fame. Sylvie had natural curls and a sweet reasonableness. Jane was a child of inspiration; if she tired of the world right side up, she viewed it upside down. Five-and-a-half-year-old Rufus meant well but was the prey of circumstance—once he racketed to New Haven in a freight car moved by a pure sense of duty.

The whole story is planted in reality and lit by the special enchantment which attends things remembered with laughter and with love.

From the dust jacket