how are the style and tone of the narrator's voice different from those of the characters? What if anything , is the significance of this difference?

The narrator's tone is a combination of humor, detachment, irony, and seriousness. We see humor in the narrator's description of the children's mother; other characters are simply viewed from afar, and yet others are described with all of the goodness, fauilts, and peculiarities intact.

Unfortunately, with the character of the misfit, the tone becomes far more serious as the family comes face to face with evil.