Book World: Carolyn See reviews 'Making Toast' by Roger Rosenblatt

The little kids are marvelously drawn here. Each one, Jessica, Sammy and James, is shown without the slightest hint of sentimentality. "No mom for me," Sammy says matter-of-factly as he watches a sitcom with his grandfather, and Rosenblatt answers with the requisite, "Mommy is still with us. . . . She's always with us everywhere." Sammy appears to go along with that out of politeness, if nothing else, thus carrying on their tradition of ferocious good manners. The point, for everyone, is to act as decently as possible, to create a shield of good conduct, which, with luck, might transform what they're going through into something like a good time.

More than once, reading this, I thought of Elizabeth Enright's masterful children's books "The Saturdays" and "The Four-Story Mistake," in which four kids who've lost their mother but still have their devoted housekeeper, their wonderful dad and a faithful family friend, manage to transform their loneliness into something to be proud of, to tell stories about. "Making Toast," with luck, will serve that function for the Solomon children and for many readers who will turn to this for information on how to live a treacherous life with wit, humor, courage and good manners strong enough to hold back the demons of monstrous death and meaningless loss.

See reviews books regularly for The Post.

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-- And the definitive biography of Joseph Pulitzer.