#12

That feeling of leaving a fictional world and having to join the real world is always so much stronger when the book is a really good one.  You don't really want it to end...so you read all of it...the author's note, the sources and suggestions for further reading...the acknowledgments...and then the last blank page, and it's done.
That's exactly how I felt ending book #12 Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool.  I bought it at Book Fair {Yeah! Book Fair} because I liked the cover & it was a Newberry Winner...great reasons to buy a book...and I was listening to a colleague tell the librarian how she owns and has read every Newberry Award winner, ever.  What kind of teacher would I be to pass a Newberry up?
I'm glad I picked it up.  GREAT writing.  I love stories that jump back and forth and you have to figure out how it's all related.  I also love historical fiction ~ being that my own father was born in Kansas during the dust bowl/Great Depression ~ this setting fit right into my knowledge base.  And as all great stories end in death {thanks Brian Piccolo} this one does too, but it also ends in life and in finding home.  A universal story of growing up and learning where you belong ~ no matter how long that takes.
Quote time: *btw ~ I used to LOVE folding the corners of pages to mark my place ~ felt like the book was part of me.  Now I struggle to do so...as I'm 'marring' the book...but I didn't have any extra scraps of paper around when I wanted to mark a quote...so I earmarked the page...felt rather rebellious.*
p35 ~ Then there were the keepsakes.  Little things kept for the sake of something.  Or someone.
p40 ~ "there's a river that when it's in Arkansas, you can say it like that.  The Ar-kan-saw River.  But once it hits Kansas, it's called the Ar-kansas River.  That's kind of important."  {yep~ that's the truth!}
p113 ~ "Elam bouzshda gramen ze." ... "It is Gypsy.  It means the person you encounter is often more than the person you see."
fl: The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby.  ll: So for all the whos, whats, whys, whens, and wheres, look at the backside of "Hogs and Cattle" every Sunday to your new auxiliary writer―Abilene Tucker, Reporter About Town.