I enjoy receiving and giving realistic fiction, for both children and adults, with strong characters, beautiful language, and humane visions.
My father once said I was as gullible as a fish. I thought he said edible. I thought he meant I was tasty. The.
And when she goes home,′ Uncle Max said, ’to the place and the people she has romanticized all these months, she’ll see that it isn’t all she imagined. She’ll be different, but they’ll all expect her to be the same.
It is a relief to discover that although there might be axe murderers and kidnappers in the world, most people seem a lot like us: sometimes afraid and sometimes brave, sometimes cruel and sometimes kind.
I was sitting in the backseat with my brother, Luke, a seven-year-old complexity. Sometimes he acted as if he were two, and sometimes twelve. He was full of questions and energy and opinions except when you wanted him to have any of those things.
She was my mother, and she was part of me.
I cannot control who was going to come, and who was going to go, and who will stay my buddy, my pal, and who’ll find me enchanting, and oddly I feel relieved.
He says he is starting a school here, and not just any school, but “the best of the best.” He tells Signora Divino, his neighbor, “We will bring all the children from all over the world and we will live in harmony!” Is he kidding?
It is not a good idea to call yourself a sardine in a family like Leo’s, who will not let you forget it.
Tutto va Bene, All is Well.
On their way home, John said, “Marta, that’s a long way to go so that Jacob can have a friend.” “Shh,” Marta said. “Ears.” “What?” “We all have ears. Everyone in this car can hear, John.” “Well, of course we all have ears. Oh.
If I could sprinkle some hopes over all of you, they would include these: I hope you each find a meatball in the spaghetti of your life; I hope your talcum powder never empties, that your spirit is like a cork and that you all live a thousand, thousand lives. Huzzah!
Sometimes there’s not much difference between a heartsick soul and a suck ole donkey.
My middle name, Tree, comes from your basic tree, a thing of such beauty to my mother that she made it part of my name.
Gramps said, ‘How about a story? Spin us a yarn.
Let’s get out of here, my mother said.
I hated her that day. I didn’t care how upset she was about her mother, I really hated her, and I wanted her to leave. I wondered if this was how my father felt when I threw all those temper tantrums. Maybe he hated me for a while.
At home that night, I was working on my mythology report when Phoebe called. She was whispering. When she went downstairs to say good night to her father, he was sitting in his favorite chair staring at the television, but the television wasn’t on. If she didn’t know her father better, she would have though he had been crying. ‘But my father never cries,’ she said.
The second jealousy is this: I am jealous that my mother had wanted more children. Wasn’t I enough? When I walk in her moccasins, though, I say, “If I were my mother, I might want more children – not because I don’t love my Salamanca, but because I love her so much. I want more of these.
And why do I have to tell more about the blue car splattered with mud speeding down the road?
Suffering builds character.” He said that if you are always lolling around and being pampered and life is too easy, then you turn into a spineless wimp, but if you encounter suffering, you learn to face challenges and you get stronger. It sounds like something a grandparent might say, doesn’t it?