Perhaps this writer thinks HER book with its different art is different enough to not be a problem.
Exactly. Her book may well BE completely different, too. Maybe her George talks. Maybe her George moves into a Manhattan high-rise and throws sexy parties. Or whatever. It could very well be that she wondered about the name, but figured her story was so different, and gee, her PUBLISHER didn't seem to think it was a problem, and THEY'RE the ones who should know, right?
Not too long ago I was daydreaming, like you do. Trying to come up with some new story ideas around a certain character and set-up.
Had a GREAT one. Really cool. Got all excited. Started taking notes. Kept thinking. Had sketched out an entire plot and was just thinking of where such a story might go from there when I realized...
I'd just written THE LOST BOYS.
What if I hadn't seen that movie? What if I thought it was so long ago it wouldn't matter? What if I didn't realize that I was writing for people who would absolutely know THE LOST BOYS themselves?
Or how about my Demons books? My heroine was a radio call-in psychiatrist. Before the book was even
released somebody went on Amazon and accused me of ripping off the Kitty Norville books. I'd never even heard of the Kitty Norville books when I was writing it (I was living in a small town in England, remember; the only UF my local store carried was LKH), and aside from "female MC" and "radio show" there wasn't a single similarity between the two. But someone felt it was okay to publicly accuse me of plagiarism, without even having skimmed through my book in a store. That hurt; it still hurts, honestly, even though it shouldn't. It was extremely upsetting.
We can't assume that because this author wrote a story for children, that there's any real familiarity with children's books. We don't even know if she has children herself. We don't know if she does, and if one of them named her MC, and she didn't feel right about changing it because of that.
I just imagine that author is probably feeling lousy as it is. We want her to find us, we want her to join us, and we want to help her. It's not going to advance our case if she manages to wander over here and sees a bunch of people accusing her of plagiarism without knowing anything about her book except for a short blurb and the name and species of her main character.
These PAers are real people, with real feelings that are already taking a beating. Let's not forget that, okay?