Pitch Opportunity

BookEnds is giving a great gift to its blog readers: a chance to have your pitch critiqued by the agents. Go sign up for it now! And, for the curious, here's my latest revision of my own pitch (edited first sentences):

Belle Ravenna thought starting eighth grade meant change. Maybe class bully Ashleigh would move on to another victim, gorgeous Matt would finally notice her, or, at the very least, she’d make some real friends. But of all the changes Belle hoped for, she never dreamed of how much she would change after discovering that her new English teacher was a witch.

Magical Ms. Wendt may be able to have Sophocles as a guest speaker, but she can’t escape the prison of her own classroom. Trapped behind an enchanted blue door that alters her students’ memories of magic, Ms. Wendt has little hope of rescue—although Belle and her classmates want to help their teacher, they only recall her imprisonment within the classroom. When the new science teacher introduces the kids to alchemy, Belle thinks that may be the key to saving Ms. Wendt. The more Belle learns about alchemy, though, the more she suspect that her science teacher wants to use it to steal Ms. Wendt’s magic…and if she helps, she’ll get some of that magic for her own. Caught between one teacher who wants freedom and another who wants magic, Belle must choose between fighting for what she thinks is right and taking what she knows she wants.

Based loosely on the Greek myth of Bellerophon, The Amnesia Door is a 70k word MG novel intended for tween girls.