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.