Yolen cautions against taking the family of "Fallen Angel" as representative of her own, pointing out that the children of the story are two girls and one boy, whereas her own family has two boys and one girl.

On the other hand, she notes that Maddy is the name of her granddaughter and that the mother of the story repeats some of what she would say to her own children when they interrupted her work. ("The children all thought Mommy was slightly deaf only when it suited her.") Also notable is that the mother is a writer and the father is a college professor, as is the case for Yolen and her husband.

How does one portray an angel that is representative of goodness, eternal yet innocent? Writers for millennia have found it much easier to portray absolute evil than absolute good, so God...