Fiction
Since the beginning of time itself, my mom, my sister, and I have baked chocolate-chip cookies. They’re not amazing or perfect and definitely not round, but to us they’re as good as paradise. We bake them all the time, on rainy evenings, or mopey afternoons, or cozy Sunday mornings. If you scavenged through our kitchen [...]
Fiction
Kevin jumped out of bed and pulled at the curtains to open them. He glanced outside and groaned. The sun was not yet over the horizon, but snow was falling very heavily and the wind was whipping the trees back and forth. The snow was so thick he couldn’t even see the houses on the [...]
Fiction
By Mathilde Fox-Smith Illustrated by Anika Knudson He had decided earlier that he wouldn’t do it tonight. This nagging annoyed him profoundly. Though now that he was already plastered against a wall, inches from the swerving shaft of police-car headlights in the city, it might as well happen. As soon as the tires rolled over the [...]
Fiction
I didn’t dare breathe. The air smelled of fish—dirty, rotten fish, and the slightest of sea salt. In the distance I saw a long boardwalk out to sea. Dark, musty, wooden, it gave off the air of failure. I shivered, but not with cold. In front of me was the village I was born in. [...]
Fiction
Timing is a funny thing. Some religious figures see it as fate, when in reality, it’s chance. The world doesn’t care about any one person enough to stop its continuously moving clock and allow what some people see as “fate” to occur. The world is morphing and changing all around us, and having bad timing [...]
Poems
There are special moments where you connect with another living being. When no words are spoken you can understand each other. Some moments you can physically feel, as you run with your dog and your steps fall in line, as if to the beat of a drum. You can feel it through music as you [...]
Poems
Night knits the mountains close and hazy lines shoot high. A half moon rising low and dim quietly moans a tune; the wind is at a howl; the trees are a wobbling drum. The lake ripples— the main event is about to occur— Though it is nothing special, really, but celestial dead bodies that light [...]
Poems
I spread my sides, flattening like Play-Doh, And close my eyes as light spreads its fingers over my back. My blood heats and spills warmth into my tail and toes. Hidden prey sings the song of my recognition and their mating. I open my eyes to see a lizard. He lies on his tri-colored boulder [...]
Book Reviews
The Children of the King, by Sonya Hartnett; Candlewick Press: Somerville, Massachusetts, 2014; $16.99 It is too dangerous to stay in London. The threat of bombs falling overhead is constant, and now that France has fallen, Cecily’s parents are getting worried. So they decide to send Cecily and her brother Jeremy (along with their mother) [...]
Book Reviews
Counting by 7s, by Holly Goldberg Sloan; Dial Books for Young Readers: New York, 2013; $16.99 Twelve-year-old Willow Chance, who is fascinated by and knowledgeable about plants and medical conditions, has enough to deal with starting a new middle school with no friends and being accused of cheating on an important test before her parents [...]
