[In the following review, the anonymous critic praises The Stone-Faced Boy but recommends it for mature readers.]

… Gus, the hero of The Stone-Faced Boy, is something of a lone wolf, although he is the middle child of a family of five. As a protection against the teasing of other children, he has learnt never to show his emotions. Now he finds he is unable to do so, even when he wants to, and this worries him. He develops a habit of feeling his face to see if he is smiling. "Pretty soon he would have to start carrying around signs—signs that read: laughter; scowling; puzzlement; curiosity; anger—which he would have to hold up over his head." If, however, the reader thinks this book is going to be the story of how he solves this problem, he is mistaken, for Gus remains stone-faced to the end.

Instead, by relating the incidents of one night as they appear to Gus, a keen insight is given into his real feelings. Those incidents are curious enough. First the children find a strange dog in the snow, and then arrive home to find an equally strange woman in the kitchen. She turns out to be their eccentric great aunt from Italy. Obliquely she seems to understand Gus's predicament and, perhaps symbolically, she gives him a geode, a stone seemingly as featureless as his own face, through a crack of which he can see sparkling crystals inside. Through her, indirectly, he learns how to master his young brother, the biggest thorn in his flesh, and he overcomes his irrational fear of the well.

This is a strange book that can be read at several levels. Superficially it is an entertaining and at times chuckle-making story, but the depths will probably be seen and appreciated only by the maturer, discerning few. Donald Mackay's almost dreamlike illustrations very satisfactorily complement the story….