Oooh, a chance to admit in public about loving The Little Princess and the Secret Garden! I read them over and over again even beyond childhood (I have beautifully color-plated illustration editions. Once was enough for Little Lord Fauntleroy (though I can remember exactly what the book smelled like and what the room where I read it looked like), but when I read them to my boys (the first two), they thought they were waaaaaaaaaay too syrupy (they also found Meg in A Wrinkle in Time to be too whiney). Times have changed, or maybe boys are just different.

But as far as publishing goes, I don't see any reason to be a purist. *I* too would love to read your novel, and if I can't pull it off the shelf in a bookstore, I'd be happy for other options.

It made me enormously happy when several of my friends read my MG novel to their kids, who loved it (my younger son did too, and that's who I was thinking about when I wrote it).

Sometimes it is just time to move on to the next project.

I do love your short stories that I've read here!