Though The Secret Garden remains Frances Hodgson Burnett’s best-known novel for children, another, A Little Princess, is much the most memorable. Its heroine, Sara Crewe, is changed from princess to pauper when her adored Papa dies, apparently penniless, after taking her from India to a snobbish London boarding school. Sara is resented by the school’s cruel head, Miss Minchin, and Lavinia, the most spoilt of the other girls, and her life alters dramatically. Living in a freezing attic, she endures mockery, hunger and cruelty. What saves her is her ability to win friends.

It’s a version of the Cinderella story that speaks to any child (boys included) who has ever felt lonely or bullied, and such is its conviction that every reader feels they know the school, its inhabitants and a complete Edwardian world of extremes. Ultimately, Sara regains her rightful place in the world: but what about her companions in adversity, the maid Becky, the rat Melchidesec and poor, plain, dull Ermingarde?

This is what Hilary McKay has tackled in her sequel, in a fair approximation of the Hodgson Burnett style. Strands of the original are woven in, and although the effect is not quite A Little Princess, it does reflect McKay’s understanding of adolescent girls. Lavinia is still being a bully, and poor Ermingarde is her target.

The story progresses with a softened worldview. Miss Minchin is shown to have been an intelligent, ambitious spinster called Maria whose cruelty, vindictiveness and snobbery are the product of frustration. Spiteful Lavinia is revealed as capable of change. This, I’m afraid, will not do. Not only do children need baddies, they know that their actions can’t be explained away by a smattering of psychology and charity. Sara Crewe is a great heroine precisely because she has moral clarity and courage to look enemies in the eye and pity them.

Yet making poor Ermingarde the loyal, plodding heroine of Wishing for Tomorrow is interesting. Perhaps because she is so “dull”, prodded by a pushy parent towards academic subjects she hates, the unconfident child may sympathise with her. Shakespeare got away with turning Falstaff into a central character, but it needs someone larger, not smaller, than life to work.

McKay believes that Sara, as a “golden child” would always have been all right in the end. I disagree: what gives the original novel its drama is the fear that Sara, despite her courage and charm, is in real danger of death. Ermingarde, however, is never in real spiritual danger, so it’s hard to care for her. The story skips back, into the time when Sara is still the unpaid skivvy in the school, and forward, when our new heroine believes she had been dumped by her. Events replace psychological suspense.

Geraldine McCaughrean made a brave but doomed stab at a sequel to Peter Pan; this is another questionable enterprise. It’s clever, sweet, lively and well-written — but not, like its original, sublime.

Wishing for Tomorrow (8+) by Hilary McKay Hodder, £10.99 Buy this book

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