Jill Paton Walsh explores basic human concerns--love, death, and maturation--in novels that appeal to readers of all ages. In addition to the historical novels for which she is best known, she has written two realistic contemporary novels, two futuristic works, several fantasies, and several folklore adaptations. Paton Walsh's preferred subjects are in the large area of human experience that adults and children have in common. She explains that she writes for children largely from a belief that a book should be as simple and as readable as the writer can make it--which is to say that it ought to be for children. Paton Walsh dislikes the idea that something written for children is necessarily inferior; she points out that no one thinks a children's doctor need not be so competent as his colleagues, or that a carpenter who makes toys can manage with shoddy joinery. Her governing principle...