Chapter 1 Summary

Virginia ("Vinnie") Miner, a small, plain, unmarried fifty-four year-old professor of children's literature at an Ivy League college, who rejects the idea that plain, aging women must be self-effacing and uncomplaining, boards a daytime charter flight to London, where she will spend six months researching "A Comparative Investigation of the Play-Rhymes of British and American Children." Vinnie, who has made the trip before, knows how to cut through the crowds and settles into a window seat in such a way as to minimize any chance for conversation.

Fido, an invisible dog that manifests itself whenever Vinnie feels self-pity, accompanies her because L. D. Zimmern has attacked her in an Atlantic article calling her field of study useless scholarship. Vinnie is a New Englander at heart and Atlantic is her favorite journal. In most English departments, children's literature is an embarrassing relative, tolerated because...