Probably my 50th read in my life, but my first in quite a few years, though it's been living quietly on my bookshelf all the while because I couldn't bear to get rid of it. This series was really formative for me, right up there with His Dark Materials and Harriet the Spy and Harry Potter (though the last has obviously aged somewhat worse). In part, because it reflected certain parts of my life with an incredible closeness--I grew up in a house much messier and more full of the detritus of years than any of my friends', with a harried mother who did and does call everyone "darling", all of us often foraging in cupboards (unlike the Cassons, my dad was the primary forager and my mother the person who would think to buy a big can of baked beans for emergencies), full of spiders my father wouldn't let us kill and his various researches into macaque brains. I also was a sensitive, artsy kid who was worse at school than I was "supposed" to be, and I felt deeply seen by almost all the Cassons in turn. Obviously, this is a review that is as far from objective as it's possible to be, but I genuinely found it delightful and surprisingly nuanced this past reread. The plot is excellent constructed in a way that looks like chaos up until the end that you realize has been carefully built to this whole time, and all the members of the family feel fully realized and multidimensional. ( )

Hilarious ( )

What a perfectly delightful book. I'm totally hooked on the Casson family now and so glad to see there are more books about them! I laughed so hard while I read this-the characters are irresistible. Reading about this sweet, eccentric English family was a real treat. ( )

One of my all time favorite series. ( )

Really good! ( )