I’m washing dishes, and I pick up a spoon that looks, at first half-attending glance, like it’s covered with applesauce. I begin to wipe it off in my sudsy water, but it isn’t applesauce after all; it’s gooey and greasy and clings to my fingers, rather like…Vaseline?

"What’s on this spoon?" I ask the three girls at at the breakfast table.

"Vaseline," confirms Rose, all nonchalance.

"And why, may I ask?"

She is matter of fact, as if anyone with sense ought to have known without asking. "I was playing Rowan of Rin,* and I needed to make an antidote to Death Sleep. The Vaseline was supposed to be Silver Deep."

Well, okay then.

(*Technically, I think the Death Sleep bit comes into Rowan and the Keeper of the Crystal. Darn good books, by the way: a fantasy series by Emily Rodda. Big hit with all the 9-and-ups in this house.)

(I miss the old covers, the ones with young Rowan on them.)