L ynne Reid Banks, an English writer, was born in 1929, the daughter of a Scottish doctor and an Irish actress. Her richly varied life has included a stay in Canada during World War II, studies at the Queen's Secretarial College in London as well as at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, several years working as an actress, three years as a television news reporter and scriptwriter, nine years living (and working as a high school English teacher) on a Kibbutz in Israel with her husband, sculptor Chaim Stephenson (they have three sons), and (back in London) a continuing career as a writer of adult and children's books.

Lynn Reid Banks has written more than thirty plays and books—fiction and nonfiction—for young and old. In America, her best-known work is probably The Indian in the Cupboard (1982), written for children. Like...