Posted on by Loree Burns

Testing Your Kidlit Prowess

The Burns kids are reading some kidlit classics in school this week, and I’m reading along. (I’m sort of geeky that way.)  Wanna guess what we are reading? Sure you do …

Here’s a quote from the Newbery Medal winner my seventh graders are reading for Language Arts class:

“Then all of the citizens had been ordered to go into the nearest building and stay there. IMMEDIATELY, the rasping voice through the speakers had said. LEAVE YOUR BICYCLES WHERE THEY ARE.”

And this one’s taken from a book my fourth grader is devouring at the moment. It’s another classic, by a zany author whose works are well-known and much-loved, in the Burns house and around the world:

“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has an ugly thought every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier, until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.”

Well? Have you guessed? I’ll post the answers–book and author–in the comments later today …

7 Replies to “Testing Your Kidlit Prowess”

  2. I’m gonna guess “Number the Stars” by Louis Lowry (had to Google the author, so don’t be impressed) for the boys and “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” by Judy Blume for the young miss. The latter is a total guess. Happy reading!

    1. Right author on number one, Dawn, but wrong book. Lois Lowry also won a Newbery for THE GIVER, which is the book the first quote is from. I am enjoying reading this one again.

      The second quote was from THE TWITS, by Roald Dahl. Dahl has never been my cuppa, but young Miss Catherine adores him …

  3. Hmm. I think the first quote is from “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. The second one has me stumped but it sounds like something I’d like to read.

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