the ANYBODIES by N.E. Bode

This YA novel - totally suitable for the younger crowd - has me in stitches. Don't miss this read. It is worth reading for the voice alone.

Fern Drudger knew that her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Drudger, were dull.

Ridiculously dull.

Incredibly tragically dull.

Fern tried to believe the sensible Drudgers. She tried. But there was some part of Fern's mind that was glowing, singing, rowdy, brassy as a m,arching band with characters so big and cartoonish they seemed to be careening down a parade route like giant helium balloons.

(Here you should take a sip of water or stretch or look around you to make sure that everything is intact. Hopefully the house isn't on fire or being invaded by a horde of some sort. Sometimes I've gotten caught up in a book, and I would have appreciated a quick reminder from the author concerning the outside world; and I swore that if I ever wrote a book, I would include one. So, here it is. Is everything in order? Okay then. Go on.)

The Bone's car was old, rusted out. It growled cancerously. It pitched thick balls of gray smoke out of its tailpipe. The Bone seemed to be volleying more than steering. He'd turn the wheel, and eventually the car would decide to go in that general direction. Every once in a whie one of the wipers would bump along the windshield, stall, then bump back again. One of the backseat doors was tied shut with rope that was attached to the driver's headrest. The ceiling lining, which had been originally set at some distant and probably now-abandoned factory, had come unglued and hung like the stretched-out underbelly of an ominous cloud; Fern's mind fluttered momentarily back to the man from the cencus bureau with the misty gray hand.

There was a sign dug into the dirt: BOARDERS WELCOME. MUST BE TIDY AND WELL-READ.

Has it ever happened to you that you had no desire to do something until someone told you not to? Don't poke your finger into the cake! your mother tells you, and although it hadn't dawned on your to poke your finger into the cake, you suddenly want to do it, desperately.

Sometimes you need to dig down deep, to rely on your own resources. This is a very American thing, self-reliance. Our forefathers and our foremothers, and, for that matter, our foreaunts and foreuncles, would say that self-reliance is a cornerstone of something or other.

Travel Team by Mike Lupica

A delightful, dare I say heart-warming, YA sports novel with a short but quick protagonist, a mom who quotes old-school song lyrics, and a dad, well - you'll just have to meet him.

HE KNEW HE WAS SMALL.

He just didn't think he was small.

Big difference.

Danny Walker, even at twelve, was smart enough to know this about girls: They were smarter than boys already. They were smarter about all the important stuff in life that didn't include sports, and would stay smarter from now on, which meant that he and the rest of the boys would be playing catch-up, trying to come from behind, the rest of the way.

Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford

I recently reread this YA classic and enjoyed the voice as much now as I did when I was a Young Adult! This was published in 1968, so I must have read it when it just came out.

This was just the kind of talk to make me squirm, and he knew it, so I just sat there for a while and squirmed, and he puffed on the Havana and grinned. He took it out of his mouth, and looked at the tip, and then shot a left at me that caught me on the shoulder and stung down to my kneecaps. -- p.22

At the top, a thousand feet or so higher, the hot, dry desert air vanished, to be replaced by air with a completely different set of qualities; mountain air, cool, fresh and joyous to breathe, as clean in its own way as a breeze from the Gulf. -- p. 29

That's the best way to get through a war: Don't be big and strong, be hard to find. -- p. 34

To my left, burning out of the sea of pink and tan faces, was the meanest-looking human pan I'd ever seen, a brown flat face with hot black eyes, a mouth so thin and lipless and straight that it seemed like the slot in a piggy bank. -- p. 49

"It's pretty up here, isn't it?" I said, making some of the brilliant drawing-room repartee for which I was famous on three continents. -- p. 89

"Steenie, " Marcia said, "you lie better and more often than anybody I know. I don't think you'll ever make it to medical school. You're going to be a career grocery-bagger at Safeway, and get a testimonial dinner after forty years of putting the lettuce and the eggs at the botton of the sack with the cans on top." --p. 114

A rattly blue bus makes a daily circle of the little mountain towns in Cabezón County, from Sagrado to the valley at Yunque, and then up through the hills -- San Esteban, Santa María, Villa Galicia, Ojo Amargo, Río Venado, Río Conejo, Amorcita, and, at the end of the route, nearly 11,000 feet high, La Cima. -- p. 137

Appalachia by Cynthia Rylant

In a certain part of the country called Appalachia you will find dogs named Prince or King living in little towns with names like Coal City and Sally's Backbone.

The kitchens of these houses where Mamie or Boyd or Oley live almost always smell like fried bacon or chicken and on top of the stoves there are little plates of food with leftovers from breakfast or lunch or supper and you can help yourself to a biscuit or maybe a piece of cornbread crumbled into a glass of buttermilk or some cold fried squash.

There will be a lot of singing in that church and maybe some crying for joy and after the service people will linger in the yard, talking, till the women say it's time to eat, and they will go home and sit around a table spread with potatoes and beans and meat and good hot coffee or sweet iced tea and they will eat until they can eat no more except for the piece of lemon pound cake they saved some room for.

Sentences with Apostrophes: Possession or Contraction

If Jesus ever comes back to earth again, I'm thinking, he'll come as a dog, because there isn't anything as humble or patient or loving or loyal as the dog I have in my arms right now. -- Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Claire)

He laughed aloud, and his solemn Quaker face turned handsome, with dark eyes like Charity's. --North by Night by Katherine Ayres (Carlos Javier)

You know, Jacob, if it weren't for the fact that we're natural enemies and that you're also trying to steal away the reason for my existence, I might actually like you. --Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (Asne)

I hurried away, the doctor's words echoing in my mind. Brain, lungs, kidneys. . . -- Dunk by David Lubar (Luis)

As the officer said, "It's not every day you see a 1961 Red Edsel that screams Arrest me!"-- America's Dumbest Criminals by Daniel Butler (Dylan)

But at times like this, she was a stranger to me, someone bigger and closer to God's divine word. -- Steal Away ...to freedom by Jennifer Armstrong (Sooji)

I was frankly astonished by Gran's words. -- Steal Away ...to freedom by Jennifer Armstrong (Ricky)

Sir, from what Sancho said about that place, why wouldn't he?" --Numbering All the Bones by Ann Rinaldi (Antoine)

Lizer, Monday, Betty's Tim, and the others had melted away, quiet as owls. Steal Away ...to Freedom by Jennifer Armstrong (Andrea)

I'm lying there on my side, about to close my eyes, when suddenly this horrible face with red eyes and green lips pops right up beside me, not five inches from my own and bobs up and down -- a floating head. --Shiloh Season by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Salvador)

Meggie had to laugh -- although she couldn't tell by Dusfinger's face if he was joking or meant it seriously -- Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (Alejandra)

Don't get mouthy girl, or I'll haul you over to Captain Wirz at the prison.-- Numbering All the Bones by Ann Rinaldi (Mabel)

There were many walking the road, some with older folks, some alone, and they all looked hungry and I couldn't see them without thinking of Tyler and little Delie but we just didn't have enough. -- Sarny by Gary Paulsen (Daniela)

"It's way on the other side of town, isn't it?" Piano Lessons Can Be Murder by R.L. Stine (Victor)

I couldn't bring myself to throw them away meaning what they meant and at the first gray dawn, sun just starting to help the lamp, Lucy she found it. -- Sarny by Gary Paulsen (Laura)

Rich guys like Tyler's dad, they don't fish for money, they fish for the fun of it, and because it gives them an excuse to own a big expensive boat and wear a long-billed fisherman's cap. -- The Young Man and the Sea by Rodman Philbrick (Daniel)

All God's creatures need such times of rest, as it girds them for the coming spring and for whatever journeys the warming weather will bring. -- North by Night by Katherine Ayres (Catalina)