Ann Martin's " A Dog's Life - the Autobiography of a Stray"

The fire pops and I rise slowly, turn around twice, then a third time, and settle onto the bed again, Susan smiling fondly at me from her armchair.

Warmth is important to an old dog.

Sentences stalked by Claire Griffiths from "Hope was Here" by Joan Bauer

"Politics, he kept telling us isn't about power, control, or manipulation, it's about serving up your very best."

You don't understand the power of loss when it first hits you like a baseball coming fast from an out-of-control pitcher.

I closed my eyes; felt in my heart a brush of angels' wings and sensed those angeles coming up the welcome starways, one from the left and one from the right to guide G.T.'s spirit on the flight up to heaven.

what my mother doesn't know by Sonya Sones

What happens when a girl falls in love with the class "dork". Will she betray him when she is teased by her classmates? A novel written in blank verse.

From Mom and Dad Used to Be in Love

But now they have

these hideous battles all the time.

They scream their guts out

at each other about thinks like

how they should be raising me

or about money or the in-laws

or even just what movie to go see.

Their shrieking whips around inside me like a tornado.

And no fingers crammed in my ears,

no pillows held over my head,

can block it out.

From The Meaning of Murphy

(Okay.

I laughed too.

But only so no one would think

I was strange.)

From But Suddenly

And he looks

so happy to see me

his tail's practically wagging.

this lullaby by Sarah Dessen

Definitely a young adult book and not one for intermediate. That being said, I think this book deals well with some powerful themes.

All I knew about the seventies was what I'd learned in school and from the History Channel: Vietnam, President Carter, disco.

Don would become my stepfather, joining a not-so-exclusive group.

Not that I liked the setting, particularly; the place was a total dump, mostly because four guys lived there and none of them had ever been introduced formally to a bottle of Lysol.

Point two: he was a slob. His shirttail was always out, his tie usually had a stain, his hair, while curly and thick, sprung out from his head wildly in a mad-scientist sort of fashion. Also, his shoelaces were continually untied. He was all loose ends, and I hated loose ends.

People like Dexter followed risks the way dogs followed smells, thinking only of what could lie ahead and never logically of what probably did.

Good passage for a freewrite:

After all, Paul met just about every criteria on my guy list. He was tall. Good-looking. Had no annoying personal habits. Was older than me but not by more than three years. Was a decent dresser but didn't shop more than I did. Fell within the acceptable limits in terms of personal hygiene (i.e., aftershave and cologne yes, mousse and fake tan, no). Was smart enough to carry on good conversation but not an eggbert. But the big whammy, the tipping point, was that he was leaving at the end of the summer and we'd already established that we would part as friends and go our separate ways.

As a firm believer in the rip-it-off-like-a-Band-Aid school of bad news, I had to tell her.

Sentences from Hope Rising

Hope Rising by Kim Meeder is about a ranch in Oregon that rescues horses and then uses the horses to heal the wounded spirits of children.

After riding two of our most gentle horses, a flicker, a glimmer, a tiny glow of hope began to emerge.

Fear, which had shadowed their entire lives like a stealthy predator, could not rule them in this place.

Dawn poured over the land in a butter-colored wave.

Miscellaneous Selections

The breezes are warm and the moon is as bright as a golden doubloon. -- Snowed in with Grandmother Silk by Carol Fenner

When there were only glowing embers and an occasional flit of a flame in the fireplace, Ruddy's grandmother closed the glass fireplace doors. -- Snowed in with Grandmother Silk by Carol Fenner

My full and proper name is Douglas MacArthur Hanson. -- Invisible by Pete Hautman

Madham has 109 buildings, all scratch-built. There are two lakes, a football stadium, a cement plant, a hospital, two tunnels, a forest, and sixty feet of track. It has a population of 289 plastic people, seventeen dogs, six cows, and eleven horses. -- Invisible by Pete Hautman

My mother is used to my father's hyperlogical rages. She simply smiled and said, "I understand, dear." -- Invisible by Pete Hautman

"In this job," Morgan told me after a dinner rush, "You get a lifetime of experience every day. A crisis will crop up, worsen, come to a head and resolve itself all in fifteen to thirty minutes. You don't even have time to panic. You just push through." --keeping the moon by Sarah Dessen

A good passage with which to inspire a freewrite:

No one ever really teaches you how to dance. I was kind of moving back and forth, looking down like everyone else. I couldn't even find myself in the crowd reflected in the cafeteria windows. That was nice.

There was a girl standing next to me with glasses and long hair, and when I looked over she smiled shyly. The music was good and I relaxed, letting myself move a little bit more, copying some of the moves I saw other people making. Maybe this would be different, this school. Maybe I would make friends.

I kept dancing, thinking this, and I realized suddenly why people liked to dance; it did feel good. fun, even.

Then I heard it. Someone laughing. The noise started off quietly, but as the music was dying down, the song changing, it got louder. I looked up, still dancing, to see a boy across the cafeteria with his cheeks puffed out, moving like a hippopotamus, his legs straight and locked, rocking back and forth. Everyone was standing around watching him, giggling. The more they laughed, the more pronounced he became; sticking out his tongue, rolling his eyes back in his head.

It took a few seconds to realize that he was imitating me. And by that point everyone was staring.

I stopped moving. The music changed and I glanced around me to see that the girl with the glasses was gone; everyonewas gone. I'd been all alone, dancing, in my big fat Misses Plus jeans and new shirt. --keeping the moon by Sarah Dessen