Cold Shoulder Road by Joan Aiken

The sun on their right was like a silver penny, faint in the mist.

Like Water in Wild Places by Pamela Jooste

Adult book. Kind of magical realism. I loved this passage because often we need to develop eyes to see the beauty in a place.

The farm is called Liefdefontein. Fountain of Love. It stands in the drylands that run close to the border of Namibia. If you don't havve eyes that see, the land looks like nothing. It looks as if its soul has been snatched away from it.

It's flatscape, and sometimes there are small hills and gullies that trap the afternoon shadows and are ice-cold at night. Even in summer, when the rain sings down, the grass clings tight to the ground in small khaki tufts.

Winter, when the frost comes and the ground is bare and the trees pared down, is a the time to hunt. Then the game run looking for water and the landscape is pale and clear. The sun is sharp and you can see for a very long way. Even without telescopic sights, all moving things are easier to see and to track and to hunt down.

Me and Orson Welles by Robert Kaplow

I showered and got dressed with my eyes closed to see what it felt like to be blind. [I thought I was the only person who did this!]

5th Grade Sentence Stalking

Bad guys had taken over the streets, and all of the superheroes in the world were too old to fight evil. Chaffick from The Adventures of Captain Underpants (funny, caught my attention)

Electrified or not, the fence has been successful at keeping the flesh-eaters out of District 12. -- Logan from Hunger Games (terror, exciting)

We can only accept huntsmen whose heads have parted company with their bodies. ~ Lauren from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (extraordinary, unusual)

Aunt Bubbles was going off to her job at the bakery. ~ Hwa Jeong from Stuart's Cape (like bakeries)

It's been said that adults spend the first two years of their children's lives trying to make them walk and talk . . . and the next sisteen years trying to get them to sit down and shut up. ~ Natalie from Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People (Funny)

And it was over there, while my father and mother and I were driving in icy weather just north of Oslo that our car skidded off the road and went tumbling down into a rocky ravine. ~ Isabella from Witches (Roald Dahl is putting himself in the book and he doesn't know how to do it.)

One time, when I was blind in a tree, waiting motionless for game to wander by, I dozed off and fell ten feet to the ground, landing on my back. ~ Rakshit from The Hunger Games (action)

"Up with the sun, asleep with the moon!" Cousin Howie had said. ~ Chris from Double Fudge (true)

A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one within. ~ Daryush from Inkheart (I like it because it gives a clue about what will happen in the chapter.)

Should you decide to keep the painting, install appropriate lighting and humidity controls, and select furniture to complement it. ~ Marc from Don't Try This At Home (funny in the context)

My heart jumped and I heard Marla send a burst of machine gun fire toward the guys with the rocket-propelled grenade launchers. ~ Amit from Sunrise Over Fallujah (Action, good to picture in your mind.)

Silvertongue did not mock his fear of the dark either, as Dustfinger had, and curiously enough that made the fear less, shrinking it as only daylight usually did. ~ Alejandra from Inkheart (lots of details about the fear)

I rubbed Winn-Dixie's head and scratched him behind the ears the way he liked. ~ Natalia from Because of Winn Dixie (Like seeing the dog happy.)

If someone is yelling from excitement, the polite thing to do is yell back. ~ Polina from Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls (funny, she's trying to say do something good for someone who does something good for them --in a mysterious way)

"Mom, Dad," said Ricky, "can I have a pet?" ~ Samuel from Mighty Robot (like that he is asking if a robot can be his pet)

At that very moment, a heavy black Bludger came pelting toward him; he avoided it so narrowly that he felt it ruffle his hair as it passed. ~ John from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secret (action)

She felt the slender, smooth stone in her left hand, which she had been about to try to skip as far as she could. ~ Nicolas from The Bad Beginning (describes all she felt in that moment)

Undercover by Beth Kephart

The sun was already falling out of the sky, and my parka wasn't thick enough for the wind that was blowing so hard that sometimes the ravens in the trees seemed tossed off their limbs. Snow, I thought, because the clouds were overwrought.

An odd bleached sun pressed up against my bedroom windows, and all about the windows, like delicate frames, white webs of frost had settled in.

Drinkable skies, I'd think of, and amber sun. (About summer)

The sun had come down hard the afternoon before and melted things, but at dusk the temperature had dropped, so now, outside, it was a stalactite world, heavy icicles daggering down from the gutter lines and window ledges.

Now You See It . . . by Vivian Vande Velde

Lead: One way to look at what happened is that everything is the fault of my optometrist and his enthusiasm for those miserable eye-drops that make your eyes supersensitive to light.

Despite the fact that it sent chills up my back and made my toes curl with anxiety, I went back and touched the thing.

The Particular SAdness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

This was the week of my ninth birthday, and it had been a long day at school of cursive lessons, which I hated, and playground yelling about point scoring, and the sunlit kitchen and my warm-eyed mother were welcome arms, open.

The night-blooming jasmine that crawled up our neighbor's fromt gate released its heady scent at dusk, and to the north, the hills rolled charmingly over the horizon, houses tucked into the brown.

The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts by Richard Peck

Richard Peck's books ALWAYS have me laughing out loud.

If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it. You know August. The corn is earring. The tomatoes are ripening on the vine. The clover's in full bloom. There's a little less evening now, and that's a warning. You want to live every day twice over because you'll be back in the jailhouse of school before the end of the month.

Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

This is the story of a time, and a place, and a family.

The Same Stuff as Stars by Katherine Paterson

Hurry up, and I mean both of you. I swear, sometimes you kids act like snails on Valium. . . . Get a move on, will you?

"It's the pickup," Angel said. Then, through the usual rattle of the truck she heard the blubbidy blubbidy blubbidy sound.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

A large trunk stood in the very middle of the room. Its lid was open: it looked expectant; yet it was almost empty but for a residue of old underwear, sweets, empty ink bottles and broken quills that coated the very bottom.

The sleet-spattered windows were rattling in their frames and the room was chilly despite the fire crackling in the grate.

He was not quite as rotund as the Slughorn Harry knew, though the golden buttons on his richly embroidered waistcoat were taking a fair amount of strain.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode."

Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.

"She was the one who started it," said Harry. "I wouldn't've ---she just sort of came at me ---and the next thing she's crying all over me --- I didn't know what to do ---"

It was unbearable, he would not think about it, he could not stand it. . . . There was a terrible hollow inside him he did not want to feel or examine, a dark hole where Sirius had been, where Sirius had vanished. He did not want to have to be alone with that great, silent space, he could not stand it.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

What a delightful book in structure, writing, and thinking. I want a sequel, Jacqueline Kelly! I need to know if Calpurnia achieved her dreams.

They [the dogs] got up long enough to slurp at the water trough and then flopped down again, raising puffs of dust in their shallow hollows.

Then a hummingbird careened around the corner of the house and plunged into the trumpet of the nearest lily drooping in the heat.

We heard the piano start up in the parlor, a limpid, haunting melody; Harry had been pressed into playing for our visitors.