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WHY I WROTE THIS NOVEL THE WAY I DID...

As a girl I had a music box that played The Blue Danube with a little spinning ballerina just like the one on the cover. While it was beautiful, it was also spooky. The music had an eerie quality. And whenever I looked into the mirror behind the ballerina, I saw my own eyes staring back at me.

But what if they weren't my own eyes? What if someone else was behind the mirror?

It worried me.

In The Phantom Music Box I played out all my deepest fears about that music box to their most frightening endings.

Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 978-0-545-58847-8
Ages 8-12

Excerpt:   


Lifting the box, Emma examined it in the light
of the moon. Startled by what she saw, she threw
the box onto her bed.

The eyes were back! Once more, the blue eyes
peered through the oval mirror.  Emma crawled onto her bed, afraid to look at the mirror inside the lid, but determined to know if it was really her own reflection. Holding the box at arm’s length, and at an angle so that she was definitely not reflected in the mirror, Emma got her answer.

These were not her eyes.

Someone was looking through the mirror. “Hello?” Emma whispered. “Who are you?” Once more the music swelled, and the little figures began to spin faster and faster. At the same time, a gray mist seeped through the oval mirror and poured into the room.