Waiting for Tomorrow

Wishing for Tomorrow by Hilary McKay, 273 pages

This is a sequel to A Little Princess by Frances Hogdson Burnett.  It has all of the characters from the original book, pretty much, except that Sara, the heroine of the first story, is only present in letters that she is sending to Ermengarde.  Ermengarde misses Sara terribly, but is hurt that she didn’t share the magic with her, and doesn’t really return her letters.  Her hurt almost causes her what would be one of the biggest regrets of her life.  We also get to see Lavinia, who was kind of a bully, grow into herself, and Lottie, who was barely out of babyhood, grow up quite a bit.  Even Miss Minchin, who was definitely the villain in the previous book, turns out to be not so awful in this book.  It’s not a bad story, but there’s very little conflict, compared to the last story, so it’s not really that interesting.  Kids that really want to know what might have happened next will get some satisfaction from this story but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else.