KIRKUS REVIEW
Poor Harold is one of those kids who is forever getting rained on, spilling pencils in the bus, and generally messing up--and his sister Hilda won't let him forget it. On Friday the 13th he has worse luck than usual, especially when first-string illnesses land him in an after-school baseball game and he persists in striking out. Then unaccountably, in the last inning and after two strikes, Harold wins his team a 7-6 victory and himself a moment of glory, by hitting himself and two teammates home. And though he continues to be as clumsy as ever, Hilda gets her comeuppance in the kitchen when she slips and falls in the juice Harold has spilled! In real life such an accident would more likely mean more trouble for Harold. So, though Kroll sets up a sympathetic situation and Gackenbach makes it more so, the good luck is too arbitrary and obvious and the putdown of Hilda off-target.