Leilani Hart has, since quite small, enjoyed a good tale, her first introduction being the charm of Beatrix Potter’s stories of Peter Rabbit, Jeremiah Puddle Duck Huck Finn Kitten and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. The magic spell cast by a well-spun story captivated her young mind. Books soon became a magic carpet to transport her up and away from the dreary Navy housing units of her childhood, and a little later from the grid of tract housing projects of modest “cracker box” houses, each a carbon copy of the other. 

A tale of daring adventure could lead her down into dark underground caverns with brave Princess Irene, who saved her father’s kingdom from the goblin invasion, or else climb aboard a rude raft floating with the current down the mighty Mississippi River with a mischievous boy named Huck Finn and a runaway slave named Jim. She traversed an ocean of prairie in a cramped covered wagon with her friend Laura, a bright pigtailed girl nicknamed “half-pint” by her Pa, or tag along with the four Pevensie children hunkered at the back of an old dusty wardrobe to escape the wrath of the McCready only to find themselves in a wonderous world of talking animals.