The Leap
I stand at the top of the cliff, gazing down at the clear, cool green of the water. I can see the rocky bottom magnified through the river’s glassy surface. The sunlight flickers along the...
Issue: <span>July/August 2014</span>
View:
I stand at the top of the cliff, gazing down at the clear, cool green of the water. I can see the rocky bottom magnified through the river’s glassy surface. The sunlight flickers along the cliff, reflecting off the smooth water. I will myself to step closer to the edge, away from the shade of the small firs, and into the sun.
Below, by Meg McKinlay, Candlewick Press:
Massachusetts, 2013; $15.99
Anyone would think that if you drowned a town with five thousand swimming pools of water, it would be done and gone, forgotten forever! But twelve-year old Cassie knows that everything has a way of revealing itself, sooner or later. Since she was a little girl, Cassie was always interested in the town that the mayor, Mr.
“We’re what?!!” I gasped, blinking in disbelief. “Moving, Naomi. To Hawaii.” My dad looked like he was torn between which expression to wear: excited or sympathetic. He ended up looking understanding when he was talking to me, and thrilled when he looked at my eight-year-old sister, not that she needed it. Peyton was practically bouncing off the walls, squealing with delight.
Nestled between two gnarled tree roots
Is a fairy house with
A sunken floor of red clay,
A triangular roof of interlocking sticks,
And a winding path of pebbles leading to a
Bark door.
Inside, a sand-colored stone serves as a nightstand,
And next to it lies a bed with a
Moss mattress and maple leaf bedspread.
The mouse was a smooth-furred, jittery-nosed, small-as-grass field mouse. I remember sitting on the roughly carpeted floor early in the mornings, when it was too cold to go outside, and watching him swipe food before the chipmunks and birds, who were at least two times the size of him, got at them beforehand.
The howl of a wolf
Driven from her home
The wail of an elephant
Shot down for his precious tusks
The lament of a polar bear
Wandering in search of untouched ice
They are nature’s plea
The moan of a tree
Torn from its sacred ground
The cry of a dolphin
Caught in a blood-red net
The scream of a seagull
Caught in suffocating oil
They are nature’s plea
A plea to stop destroying
But instead to cr...
It is super hot, humid. Sweat is running down my back like a brook. I am waiting. The A train is mine. I am on the east side of the Forty-Second Street platform for the southbound A train. People are running, late people walk slowly, lost people are walking purposefully.
A woman pushes a rattling, clanking cart. She is dirty, a wrinkled old woman. She bumps to a stop next to me.
Sugar, by Jewell Parker Rhodes; Little, Brown
Books for Young Readers: New York, 2013;
$16.99
Ten-year-old Sugar lives on the River Road Plantation in Mississippi in the early 1800s. Sugar is a young African-American girl whose father died during the Civil War and whose mother died of sickness shortly after.
One warm summer evening, when the sun was just beginning to set over the sea, a single bird chirped melodiously. His fellows one by one joined in, each singing a different melody and pitch, but somehow all truly going together. The soft, sad song of the cricket gently burst through the birdsong at random intervals, yet sounded perfectly orchestrated.
The day I abandoned my best friend was the day I lost myself. With her I was everything, and without her I was nothing.
It was a rainy day, and I was lying on a fluffy pink mat in Ashley’s room. There she was, standing, legs crossed, but not enough to hide the trembling. There she was, long dark hair tied back in a messy ponytail, unwashed and uncombed. There she was, biting her nails.