I should say that I am not eager for a deluge of requests for characters named after readers. This was a special situation. I would rather have every young reader live safely and never suffer any pain or even a low grade at school. One character can be named after a reader, but I have half a million readers. So if you're not in a coma, don't ask.

Jenny's mother read my letter to her. It brought a great widening of Jenny's eyes and her first smile since the accident. She became responsive. She would squeeze someone's hand on command. They used flash cards saying YES and NO, and Jenny's eyes would track to one or the other in answer to questions. By such means her mother ascertained that Jenny definitely preferred to have an elf girl, not an ogre girl. Big surprise! I was teasing her, of course.

After that Jenny cooperated with the therapists, and each week saw improvement. She remained largely paralyzed, and was in a body brace, and unable to move her left side or to talk. She could not close her mouth; a smile was about the limit of what she could do. She had to have nerve blocks to free up her limbs. She was, we suspect, in pain at times. But Jenny is a cheerful girl, and her smiles became more frequent, and then her laughs, and then she managed to say the first word we are sure of: "Hi." It's hard to speak when your face is paralyzed. So she had miles to go, and how far she would get no one could say, but now she was in motion. She was climbing out of the pit, an inch at a time.