What are some of the best children in literature (especially young girls, about 8-10 years old)? I was trying to compile some material to create a daughter for the main character of a novella I'm writing.
If any of you guys has a sister, daughter, niece, etc. and want to share some stories and details of her personality, her hobbies, her tastes, some curious things she says, etc., please, by all means, feel free to do it here.
I was looking for moments like this one, from Chekhov's "A Boring Story":
>As I am drinking my tea, my Liza comes in wearing her fur coat and her cap, with her music in her hand, already quite ready to go to the Conservatoire. She is two-and-twenty. She looks younger, is pretty, and rather like my wife in her young days. She kisses me tenderly on my forehead and on my hand, and says:
>"Good-morning, papa; are you quite well?"
>As a child she was very fond of ice-cream, and I used often to take her to a confectioner's. Ice-cream was for her the type of everything delightful. If she wanted to praise me she would say: "You are as nice as cream, papa." We used to call one of her little fingers "pistachio ice," the next, "cream ice," the third "raspberry," and so on. Usually when she came in to say good-morning to me I used to sit her on my knee, kiss her little fingers, and say:
>"Creamy ice ... pistachio ... lemon ..."
>And now, from old habit, I kiss Liza's fingers and mutter: "Pistachio ... cream ... lemon ..."