Surprisingly, after rewriting the end of chapter 2 three or so times, I moved on and did four or five more pages (single spaced). This is the most I've moved forward on this ms in some time. Of course, that means I'm to the end of a chapter again and must figure out what to do--and worse, the next piece involves a total change of mood from light to dire. Don't ask me how I'm going to handle that. I have no idea. I hope it's possible to handle it.

After more discussion re. color, my thoughts now are as follows: If color is important to you, it comes through in your writing and makes the reader absorb and remember it. If you throw colors in willy-nilly because you assume kiddie books are supposed to use colors as adjectives and kids aren't smart enough to deserve more thought on your part, then, well...okay, self-editing here...I highly disapprove. There, that's much nicer than what I had the first time.