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.

Inkspell by Cornelia Funke

But the happiness remained in his heart, soft and warm like a young bird's downy plumage.

"Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several time?" Mo had said when , on Meggie's last birthday, they were looking at all her dear old books again. "As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells . . . and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower . . . both strange and familiar."

The whole secret, Meggie," Mo had once told her, "is in the breathing. It gives your voice strength and fills it with your life. And not just yours. Sometimes it feels as if when you take a breath you are breathing in everything around you, everything that makes up the world and moves it, and then it all flows into the words."

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen

I probably wouldn't have told him about Mr. Finnegan or Uncle David or why the yard was such a mess if he hadn't asked me about moving. But since he had, well, I wound up telling him everything. And it felt like blowing a dandelion into the wind and watching all the little seeds float off, up and away.