Miss Farida loves vanilla-smelling candles which flicker against the sleeping couch. I place my sandals beside the spill of shoes and slippers strewn across the plastic mat in the hallway to her room. I see the Sesame Street stickers propped near the electric piano, tangled in a hoop of dreaming dust, and the pedals, wrapped […]
January/February 2003
Jenny
The new girl stood over by the jungle gym, not climbing or talking to the other girls, but just standing there, peering into a brown lunch bag. She pulled something out of it, but I couldn’t see what it was from the distance. Matt, a skinny boy with round glasses, was talking about a scary […]
A Real American
A Real American by Richard Easton; Clarion Books: New York, 2002; $15 This is the heartfelt story of two young boys becoming friends under some very adverse conditions. Nathan McClelland is a Pennsylvania farm boy whose neighbors have moved out, sold out to the coal company. He is lonely, with all of his friends gone, […]
