My paperback Scholastic is dated 1978, but is titled What Goes Up Must Come Down, with a note: (original title: The Law of Gravity). ?áMy cover image is the boy and girl sitting on the rooftop among all the garden plants, yellow background in place of sky. ?áI see by a google search there are other covers.

Anyway, 11 yo Margot's?áfather and?áonly two friends are away all summer, and so, at loose ends, she finds herself making friends with Bernie, who knows about all the wonderful things one can find in the library, and who teaches her to ride a bike so she can explore further around NYC and discover that it's not such an awful place to live even when it's hot and muggy. ?áAnd yet, as her mother has been claiming for the last nine years, ?áthe apartment and rooftop can be comfortable, and there's no need to explore at all. even to walk down the four flights of stairs to the street.

Iow, Mother is much like me. ?áI'm fighting a desire to hermit, and as I make my apartment more and more comfortable, and if I had a rooftop for a garden, it's ever more difficult. ?áWhen I first heard about this book I hoped that reading it would be a bit biblio-therapeutic for me, but it's geared towards children and it never uses any word like agoraphobia.

So, reading it from child's point of view: ?áGood book. ?áMargot is lucky to find Bernie, but she quickly proves to be able to learn how to be a good friend, and, though it takes a little longer, she learns to appreciate her mom just the way she is, too. ?á

Unfortunately, the ending spoils it, as the dad is pleased to get an offer to teach at Stony Brook. ?áTurns out that over 1 1/2 hours away, so Margot and Bernie will have to resort to being pen pals. ?áAnd the family is going to get a ranch house, so mom will be 'cured' because to have a garden she'll have to go outside and there will be no 'downstairs.' This seems more like a publisher's or Disneyfied ending instead of what the author had intended, given the entire rest of the book.


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