Winters is a freelance writer and editor who has written for a wide variety of academic and educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses themes of truth and moral questions in Fox's story.

As John Rowe Townsend pointed out in A Sounding of Storytellers, children's literature in the 1950s and early 1960s tended to promote a gentle, reassuring view of children, their families, and their role in society. He wrote, "Childhood was part of a continuing pattern—the orderly succession of the generations—and [in the accepted view] children were growing up to take their place in a known and understood world." By the late 1960s, however, people were becoming aware that this notion of childhood as a safe, protected time was just that— a notion—and it did not reflect the reality of children's lives. Children, like adults, suffer, experience trauma, and live through conflicting...