A many-layered book about a lonely latch-key child; a favourite book of my oldest daughter when she was in middle school. Is Amanda's fantasy world, where Pink Pig is her best friend and an evil wizard threatens the Little World inhabited by her collection of glass miniatures, really more divorced from reality than her elegant mother's fantasy world in which Amanda's older brother Dale, a less-than-stellar scholar and a competent team player, will win an athletic scholarship or qualify academically for an Ivy League college? ( )