Student quote

The book was magnetic, as if it were a magnet and I were a paper clip. --Jeongpyo

pictures of hollis woods by Patricia Reilly Giff

The white house: crumbs on the table, kids fighting over a bag of Wonder bread.

It was wonderful, the first place the sun hit every day, so that squares of light turned the room to lemon gold.

And so I drove in that field in the summer-evening light, Steven shouting directions as I lurched through the ruts, bucking, stalling, starting up again with gear-grinding noises.

We'd sail up and down the aisles of DeMattia's Food Store, picking and choosing: ravioli, and a pink can of shredded tuna for Henry.

catalyst by Laurie Halse Anderson

Disney is our collective stepparent, the nice one who tells us bedtime stories and bakes cupcakes.

My lab partner snorts. "Family classic [Alice in Wonderland]," she mutters. "Mind-altering drugs, demented hatters, and a homicidal queen." She opens her Spanish book to the pluperfect subjunctive.

Sharon's tongue reminded Andrew of a frog catching flies. He wondered if Sharon ever got a mouthful of bugs the way she opened her mouth and wiggled her tongue around. --contributed by Briana

Eggs by Jerry Spinelli

In her mind's eye, Primrose saw a house-like paint job--maybe white with blue trim--and a little white picket fence and a patch of grass and a birdbath and flower boxes for windows. --contributed by Jordan

Madison Finn by Laura Dower

Fifteen minutes into the start of the school day, and Madison Finn had already chewed off all the orange glitter polish on her left hand.

Spunk & Bite by Arthur Plotnik

An energetic book on writing style. I actually liked it more than "Eats, Shoots, & Leaves."
Sometimes when I'm digging for the right word, I long for a terrier-like acuity, a canine's sensory gifts applied to language. (xi)
Whenever I review those dictates from The Elements of Style, that cynosure of American composition by William Strunk Jr. and E. B White, I feel like I should make a dash for it, vault the gates into the free zone. (p. 2)
With some ten million copies rooted on as many reference shelves, Strunk and White has become the ivy (if not the kudzu) on our great walls of clarity and correctness. (p. 3)
Not that graphic novelists invented loopy onomatopoeia. James Thurber was there some time ago: "Tires booped and whooshed, the fenders queeled and graked," he wrote in one of his sketches. (p. 81)