"Growing up in a rather limited, narrow environment," Zilpha Keatley Snyder writes in Innocence & Experience: Essays & Conversations on Children's Literature, "I escaped through books and games into a much wider world. I loved almost any kind of story, any kind of imaginary world, but I loved best the kind that suggested that around any corner, no matter how unpromising, a free and boundless adventure might be waiting."

Snyder has drawn upon her own childhood experiences to create novels about lonely young girls who seek escape from their loneliness through imagination and games. In works such as The Headless Cupid and The Witches of Worm, Snyder demonstrates an affinity for the concerns of young people, growing up alone and isolated in an often hostile world. "I began by writing about a close, familiar world," she explains in Innocence & Experience, "but about a day that somehow turns out to be...