"This is tip top story telling material, with folk lore background drawn from France, Germany, Poland, Italy, England and Sweden. Very charmingly done, with an original sort of connecting link, in which a small boy, kept in after school for not knowing his arithmetic, trades riddles for stories with six peddlers. The arithmetic end will produce confusion worse confounded, however, as the youngster uses riddles that are much more advanced in arithmetic than the problem of six from six leaves what -- and the answer to that in the end will puzzle the already puzzled even more." -Kirkus Reviews