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One wonders what sort of audience Dr. Blatz had in mind in preparing this account of the Dionne quintuplets. Presumably for parents, it oscillates between snatches of sentimental description of the children and their environment; some rather dubious psychological theorizing about play, discipline, freedom, learning, and especially the emotions; and a good deal that is sound in applied pedagogy. An admixture of diagrams and charts tabulating the study of their resemblances and observations of their acquired characteristics gives a pseudo-scientific slant to the book. The result is a fainter than sketchy picture either of individuality or of psychological growth. At the most, the layman gets an impression of the routine of well-ordered group life similar to the procedures and practices used in an up-to-date nursery school, but continuing twenty-four hours in the day.
Judging by the assertions made, the evidence of the charts kept and also by the photographs, the quintuplets seem to be well brought-up babies thriving under a reasonable regime of adults, selected and trained, and changed on occasion. From all conventional standpoints, the results seem successful at this point. Physically, the 'quints' have caught well up to the norm for their age. Mentally, their earlier retardation, attributed to many factors, their being quintuplets, the institutional life, the early necessity for over-solicitous care, is being overcome at a rapid rate. An 'extraordinary spurt' in learning and intelligence, which has continued into their fifth year, appeared suddenly at the age of three. This showed itself especially in language development which was conspicuously retarded until the third year, when the 'spurt' began. The importance of this year and again of the fifth,