Written in the 1940s, these two stories, like the others in The Golden Apples, take place ‘in and around an imaginary small town in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta called Morgana. ’ In ‘June Recital,’ a piano teacher focuses her passionate feelings about art on a pupil who throws away her talent. In ‘Moon Lake,’ young girls at a summer camp are ‘jolted forward into adolescence. ’ Both stories deal with young people becoming aware of themselves in the largeness and complexity of the world; both, without calling attention to their brilliance of observation of character and detail, are magical. In an interesting new introduction, Welty recalls the circumstances under which she wrote the stories, and twenty new illustrations add visual charm to this lovely book.

- Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican College, Blauvelt, NY, Library Journal