bookclub books

Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson

Lord, what was the matter with him? Janice Avery had given him nothing but trouble, but now he was feeling responsible for her - like one of the Burkes' timber wolves or beached whales. "She didn't even cry when kids teased her 'bout Willard after the note."

How could he explain it to her? "Leslie. If she was an animal predator, we'd be obliged to try to help her."

How could he trust every thing that mattered to him to a sassy six-year-old? Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.

He wondered what it would be like to have a mother whose stories were inside her head instead of marching across the television screen all day long.

She had tricked him. She and made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there - like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.

Maybe one day when he was grown, he would write her a letter and tell her that Leslie Burke had thought she was a great teacher or something. Leslie wouldn't mind. Sometimes like the Barbie doll you need to give people something that's for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it.

Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sachar

Everybody in Mrs. Jewls's class thought she was a very nice teacher. They were wrong. There is no such thing as a nice teacher. If you think you have a nice teacher, then you are wrong too. Inside every nice teacher there is a mean and rotten teacher bursting to get out. The nicer the teacher is on the outside, the meaner the teacher inside is.

Tumble Home by Amy Hempel

Weekend, Church Cancels Cow and The Children's Party remind me of childhood.

dog has died: The need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

"He goes to pick up the steaks, there could be a stuffed effigy of the butcher behind the counter, Tony'd engage it in conversation."

Housewife
She would always sleep with her husband and with another man in the course of the same day, and then the rest of the day, for whatever was left to her of thar day, she would exploit by incanting, "French film, French film."