"Meet the Malones" is a story in which the world of an American high school appears as it does in many an American city today….

[The Malone children are settling their family problems] very well in their own way when their step-grandmother, a high-pressure career woman, comes for a visit. She settles everything for them; all they need pay, for what they don't want, is self-respect. Nonna goes, but meanwhile there has been a series of demonstrations that Emerson was right when he said the highest price you could pay for anything was to get it for nothing. This is not a second "Little Women": we don't need one, having the first. But we do need good contemporary high school stories, and this is one. (p. 40)