"The sacred texts of childhood are not always the ones adults recommend." - Alison Lurie, Don't Tell the GROWN-UPS: Subversive Children's Literature, Bloomsbury, London, 1990, page ix.

"Every nice family should have a charming maiden aunt. I'm going to be the one in ours." - Joey Bettany in Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's The Chalet School and the Lintons, W. & R. Chambers, Edinburgh, 1934, page 183.

For my nieces
Chloe Gosling, Francesca Jeffery Green
& Georgia Robertson
with the hope that their reading will always be subversive