When Alison Ryan's husband broke the news that he was being transferred to the United States embassy in Paris, the French teacher and lifelong Francophile was estatic. A year later with their young daughter in tow, the couple moved into an apartment near the Champs-Elysees, just as autumn was settling over the city. Paris with Kids is her memoir of the five years she spent as an American mom in Paris, an outsider with a front-row seat at the social theater of Parisian high society. Compared with the decidely laissez-faire attitude of the Parisians, Ryan's American sensibilities are often...