Reviews: (by author)

Susan Beth Pfeffer. Inspired by Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Portraits of Little Women: Ghostly Tales. New York: Delacorte, 2000. 175 pp. ISBN 0-385-32741-2. $9.95

To exploit a popular classic in order to produce and market mediocre literature for young readers who may not know they are cheated is a dirty trick. Ghostly Tales is merely one book in a series of over a dozen that use the four characters of Louisa M. Alcott's novel in shallow, speculative, primitive stories. The plots are banal and predictable, the language colorless, and the charm of the original characters completely gone.

Reviewed by Maria Nikolajeva

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