Thank you! It's a fantasy story, my first sold to a children's magazine. I've sold to more adult mags, but this is the first to a kid's mag; I like to imagine it possibly turning some kid on to reading, the way Andre Norton, Edgar Rice Burroughs and others turned me on.
My mother played a dirty trick on me... When I was little, and she thought that it was time for me to learn how to read, once we got the basics out of the way, she began reading more "advanced" books to me... ERB's Tarzan and Mars series, Heinlein's "juvinile" (and not so juvinile) books, and the Out of the Silent Planet books... The sneaky trick was that she eventually had me start reading along with her, then making me read aloud to her. I was hooked!
Mark