when i looked at my kid's lit list i saw that i had left nina bawden off, and she really does ought to be mentioned, not for her most famous carrie's war, which i thought rather bland and consider overrated (and which i really read because, well, why would i pass up a book in which mr evans was the evil adversary?) but for the more complex the peppermint pig. and it strikes me too that the ending chapters were so terrible because i know - we are the ones who live by, and in, our imaginations, confusing, and even compromising one version of reality with another - and to live in desperate narratives driven by our own unfortunate wilfulness.