title: The Winter Magpie: The Wish Fish Early Reader Series (Volume 3)
author:  Helena Macalino 
description: Helna Macalino loves to explore her dreams. She wanders along lovely garden paths with magical gates and finds her way into enchanted forests with animals who hide huge wishes in their hearts. As a member of a family of writers, she records these adventures to share with fellow wanderers. Helna wrote her first book when she was in 2nd grade, THE REFLECTION, an Alice in Wonderland style picture book about a little girl who falls through the reflection of a puddle. Now a 5th grader, Helna has released her second, third and fourth book, an early reader titled THE MOUSE BIRD (Book 1), THE CHIPMUNK KING (Book 2) and THE WINTER MAGPIE (Book 3) from her series THE WISH FISH. Want to follow Helna in her wanderings? When shes not cuddling with her bunny Cotton, or cats or doodling in her drawing notebook, she can be found on her familys website http://www.macalino.com/. Join her Reader's Group on the website and get a FREE activity book and also be the first to know when the next edition of THE WISH FISH appears!
zlib_text: OUR LADY OF THE FISHNET STOCKINGS
  
  CHRISTOPHER MOORE
  
  Chris's Introduction to Our Lady of the Fishnet Stockings
  
  
  I wrote Our Lady in 1987 after I had a dream about some soldiers firing on a
  village of peasants and the bullets stopping and hanging in the air. This is
  the only story I've ever written from a dream, and obviously that single dream
  image was only a scene that set off an alarm in my mind to get silly. As with
  Cat's Karma, this story is a little rough, and I'm not a little bit embarassed
  by it. Readers of my novels will be glad to see that I've gotten a little
  better at my craft over the years, and perhaps those of you who are aspiring
  writer's will get some encouragement out of the fact that you can get better.
  (Thank goodness). This is the first time Our Lady has appeared anywere, and
  probably with good reason, but for all it's flaws, I still love the title, so
  much, in fact, that I'm going to use it as a chapter heading on my new book
  [The Island of the Sequined Love Nun]