“But in every city there are those who have not forgotten the old days or the old stories. The ghosts, for example … The people who plodged about in the sewers under the city and came up occasionally through the man holes beside the station, they knew … and so in their own way did the pigeons. They knew that the gump was still there and they knew where it led. By a long, misty and mysterious tunnel to a secret cove where a ship waited to take those who wished it to an island so beautiful that it took the breath away.” (page 3) Continue reading “The Secret of Platform Thirteen – Eva Ibbotson”
Category: Illness
When You Reach Me – Rebecca Stead
“I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you’re gone and there’s no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It’s all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.” (page 2) Continue reading “When You Reach Me – Rebecca Stead”
The Westing Game – Ellen Raskin
“Who were these people, these specially selected tenants? They were mothers and fathers and children. A dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge. And, oh yes, one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake.” (page 5) Continue reading “The Westing Game – Ellen Raskin”
The Housekeeper and The Professor– Yōko Ogawa – translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder
“Every morning, during the entire time I worked for the Professor, we repeated this numerical q and a at the front door. To the Professor, whose memory lasted only eighty minutes, I was always a new housekeeper he was meeting for the first time, and so every morning he was appropriately shy and reserved. He would ask my shoe size or telephone number, or perhaps my zip code, the registration number on my bicycle, or the number of brushstrokes in the characters of my name; and whatever the number, he invariably found some significance in it. Talk of factorials and prime flowed effortlessly, seeming completely natural, never forced.” (Page 7) Continue reading “The Housekeeper and The Professor– Yōko Ogawa – translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder”
Her Homeschooled Highness Reviews 