"I’ve always been drawn to ensemble work. Renoir’s films constantly give a sense of joyous communal activity. All the characters in this film, as in most of his films, are specific and memorable—and Renoir’s vision of life is never pat: he can go from farce to tragedy in a moment, seamlessly, and all the while managing to be above the emotional content of his films. Understanding of it, compassionate towards his characters, but fearlessly above it. In addition his staging, both of the actors and in the camera work, is breathtakingly imaginative."

"Grossly underappreciated, this is in my view the best of all children’s books—wildly, passionately imaginative, gently moral, and quintessentially American both in its diction and in a certain rough-hewn but kindly common sense. I also choose it because it was read to me by my father when I was a little boy, and it became for some time our private world, and so rereading it always carries me back to a very happy stage when I was more innocent than I knew: I associate it with love."