I loved Playing Beatie Bow, as well as Tom's Midnight Garden and Midnight is a Place, which I think I now have to order. There was this segment on WGBH of this fellow who told excerpts from these books while at the same time drawing rough but fantastically atmospheric pictures of the characters in charcoal and pastel. It somehow deeply influenced my future writing style, because it was this vivid literal example that the reader must someway know what the characters look like -- through your words if you don't have charcoal -- or they won't remember who your people are.