Podkayne of Mars

Podkayne of Mars' is a terrific book up until the ending.
Heinlein had written stories about a young girl from Mars having an interplanetary adventure. This was different for the time as similar science fiction had always been for male readers.
When Robert A.Heinlein reworked the stories into a novel, he decided the lesson he wanted to tell was that absent parenting was bad. Poddy's adventures end with her dying, and her uncle fires off an angry communication to her parents for priorizing their own lives and careers over their children.
All of his readers and editors hated the ending.
I agree with all their criticisms.
RAH had grafted a political opinion about absent parenting, mainly aimed at the mother, onto his young girl adventures stories, and IT DID NOT WORK.
Readers thought the adventures were great.
To be suddenly lectured that this entire girl adventures story was an example of bad parenting in the most drastic way, where Poddy dies, was an example of older men, the writer and the uncle in the story, being aholes.
In the novel, the point of view at the end switches to her awful, bratty, near sociopath younger brother, where her death might be humanizing him.
The revised ending is only a little better, where Poddy is seriously hurt in the hospital, probably dying.
Just no.
Sorry, this is Poddy's story. The writer doesn't get to suddenly hijack the story to lecture parents and make it the male brat's story.
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