I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody; I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life; I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map; I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material; I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time fo..
Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read ove..
September 11 We thought we'd outdistanced history Told our children it was nowhere near; Even when history struck Columbine, It didn't happen here. We took down the maps in the classroom, And when they were safely furled, We told the young what they wanted to hear, That they were immune from a menacing world. But history isn't a folded-up map, Or an unread textbook tome; Now we know history's a fireman's child Waiting at home alone.
That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.
they'd just tell you to turn the other cheek, wouldn't they?...Trouble is, Mrs. Dowdel observed, after you've turned the other cheek four times, you run out of cheeks.
At last she said, "Them Burdicks isn't worth the powder and shot to blow them up. They're like a pack of hound dogs. They'll chase livestock, suck eggs, and lick the skillet. And steal? They'd steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke."
She said that time was like the Mississippi River. It only flows in one direction. She meant you could never go back. But of course we had. She'd taken me back.
Stay away from people who don't know who they are but want you to be just like them. People who'll want to label you. People who'll try to write their fears on your face.
Blue lightning flashed in the kitchen, and for a split second you could see every calendar on the wall in there. Than an almighty explosion like the crack of doom. She'd rolled a cherry bomb across the floor, and it went off right under the eight feet of the Cowgill brothers, the three big bruisers and Ernie.
I seen but little of this world, Except my corner of it; The city never drew me, For I knew I could not love it. What I loved best was watching The garden getting ripe And a pouch of sweet tobacco And my old cob pipe. What I loved best was a harvest moon Before a frosty morn And lamplight in the barn lot And them long, straight rows of corn. I was plain and country; That's where it starts and ends, But nobody loved her family more, Or treas..
And don't look for anything out of the law around here," she said. "The Cowgills and the Leapers is kin to the sheriff. No justice in these parts. It's every man for hisself." "But as the saying goes, if you can't get justice," Mrs. Dowdel remarked, "get even."
The trenches are all filled in, but the boys are still dying.' Then I could read her thoughts and I knew what this day meant. Mrs. Abernathy's son could have been my dad.
A Seth Thomas steeple clock stood on a high shelf. When it struck ten, Grandma jerked awake. She looked around the room astonished. It was her belief that she never slept, not even in bed.
At school we practiced for the Christmas program all month long. Miss Butler couldn't sing either, but she was a feisty director. . . . She took the Christmas program personally, as teachers do.
Then a lady flounced up and perched on the seat opposite. She had a full bird on the wing sewn to the crown of her hat, and she was painted up like a circus pony, so we took her to be from Chicago.
We had to scramble for seats in the day coach, lugging one straw valise between us and a gallon jug of lemonade. And a thermos bottle of the kind the Spanish-American War soldiers carried, with our own well water for brushing our teeth. We'd heard that St. Louis water comes straight out of the Mississippi River, and there's enough silt in it to settle at the bottom of the glass. We'd go to their fair, but we weren't going to drink their wat..
But later when I was a teacher, an English teacher naturally, my students preferred fiction to reality. They were in junior high, and so they preferred ANYTHING to reality.
The Shambaughs came, bringing Letty. She simpered up to me. Her eyes summed up the lace tippets on my Princess dress and the wide taffeta sash that was cutting me in half. "Well, Blossom, just look at you!" she said in her mother's own grown-up voice. "I have always said a good dress will cover up any flaw." "Then you had better get one like it," I replied."