The lighter, playful side of Sylvia Plath (turns out there was one!) emerges brilliantly in this delightful children's tale. To hear Plath write for kids in a helpful, hopeful style and tone, completely devoid of the poetic, metaphoric despair she patented, is poignant, to say the least. One wishes she could've heeded the moral lesson of her story, that it doesn't matter what you look like outside or especially in, more successfully.... But such difficult lessons rarely penetrate beyond childhood when one is plagued by terrible pain the suffocating weight of Plath's. Try not to tear up if you read it to a kid, like I did. If they ask why you wept, but they're too young to hear about her death, just rub your eyes, smile and reply, as I have -- "Aw ... it doesn't matter" -- and so pay your homage to Plath.
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