AROUND THE WORLD IN ELEVEN YEARS

Patience, as the title indicates, is eleven. This is her story, with occasional interpolation of her younger brothers. It's naive -- and humorous (unintentionally) -- and occasionally surprisingly discerning -- and matter-of-fact, taking life in its stride. Here are three children who have gypsied the world over with a photographer father sometimes in, more often out of funds, and a temperamental mother, once of the Broadway stage. Their list of acquaintances is no respector of persons, high or low. Their tongues adopt various languages and quaintly words from one or another slip into natural place in the writing of their travels. There's an inconsequentiality about the selection of the material that augurs the child's own hand. But the simplicity of it is almost too apt, too unstudied, Well, whether ""ghosted"" or no, it is refreshing -- and young and old could share it with pleasure. France, Austria, Germany, Russia, England, America -- where next?