FAMILIES ARE LIKE THAT: Stories to Read to Yourself

Black or white, hyphenated or middle American, Richard Cuffari makes these happy families look all alike and the CSA's selections from previously published stories, chosen as usual on the basis of heart-tugging simplicity and interpersonal values rather than depth or sharpness, emphasize the warmth that envelops their everyday encounters. Toward the end there are some sundered families, but two of the children involved, Doris Johnson's Korean ""Su An"" and Rose Blue's foster child in ""A Quiet Place,"" find warm new welcomes while the third, Rafer in Joan M. Lexau's ""Me Day,"" spends a happy birthday with his divorced Daddy. The other families are poor too but very much together: waiting for Hispanic Papa to return from a week at his two jobs in Ruth Sonneborn's ""Friday Night Is Papa Night,"" stowing away on an Italian Papa's San Francisco fishing boat in Patricia Miles Martin's ""No, No, Rosina,"" helping widowed Mother run the Florida apartment building she inherits in Marion Holland's ""No Children, No Pets,"" breaking in a new puppy in Janice May Udry's ""What Mary Jo Wanted,"" being assured that he is his parents' ""really truly child"" even though he's 'dopted in a scene from Carolyn Haywood's 1944 Here's a Penny, or tossing goosefeathers in an excerpt from Emma L. Brock's Topsy Turvy Family that epitomizes the Association's innocent ideal.