First Lines from Richard Peck's SCBWI Breakout Session

By Susan J Berger

The are the first lines Richard Peck gave as examples in his Breakout session. I linked the titles to Amazon. I use Amazon because of the  Look Inside feature. But you can find all of them at IndieBound or your local library.

The cat had a party to attend and went to the baboon to get groomed.
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk A modern Bestiary by David Sedaris.

School was finally out and I was standing on a picnic table in our backyard getting ready for a great summer vacation when my mother walked up to me and ruined it.

Dead End In Norvelt by Jack Gantos

THE DEAD WERE WATCHING
Balthazar by Claudia Grey

The shaft of the arrow was black and fletched with crow feathers, but Hylas couldn't see the head because it was buried in his arm.
Gods and Warriors by Michelle Paver

Our Hamster is running but he'll never get elected.
Amelia Bedelia's First Vote by Harman Parish.








Will Sparrow was a liar and a thief and hungry.ill Sparrow's Road  by Karen Cushman.






I want a refund from ancestry.com
 Ungifted by Gordon Korman






Minutes after the shootings, everyone's cell phone rang. We weren't supposed to have cellphones unless we had a note from our parents explaining why they had to reach us in a hurry/

After by Francine Prose





When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold




Richard Peck writes wonderful first lines. Here is his latest:

We who live in The Royal Mews next door to Buckingham Palace-horses, humans, mice, one cat, a cow for the milk, and the occasional goat-were in the service of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India.
The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail by Richard Peck


I hope some of these lines inspire you to pick up the book.
Happy reading and writing.

Answers To First Lines from Cybil Finalists

by Susan Berger

These are the First Lines from the 2012 Cybil Finalists with links to the books.

Five of these of the books also made the Ala List.

Some of my links are Amazon. A few are Goodreads. I am beginning to like the Goodreads links becasue they lead to other sources for the books. Including libraries. I hope you enjoy finding out who wrote these lines and I hope some will make it to your reading list.

1. On a cold afternoon, in a cold little town, where everywhere you looked was either the white of snow or the black of soot from chimneys, Annabelle found a box filled with yarn of every color.

 

ExtraYarn by Mac Barnette. Illustrated by Jon Klassen

Extra Yarn is a also Caldecott Honors Book for 2012

2.    Prologue: May 22, 1950

HE HAD A FEW MORE MINUTES to destroy seventeen years of evidence, Still in pajamas, Harry Gold raced around his cluttered bedroom, pulling out desk drawers, tossing boxes out of the closet, and yanking books from the shelves. He was horrified. Everywhere he looked were incriminating papers-a plane ticket stub, a secret report, a letter from a fellow spy.

Bomb  The Race to build and steal the world’s most DangerousWeapon by Steve Sheinkin

Bomb won the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award for most distinguished informational book for children, ,Newbery Honor and YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults:  This one I have to read.


3. At least look at the picture!” Flora’s dad begged. “Don’t you want to know what to expect?” He pushed the glossy brochure across the table. It had a photo on the cover of a large white house on a very green lawn, and the words “Penrice Hall-Individual Fulfillment in a Homelike Atmosphere.”

Beswitched  by Kate Saunders

4. It was his own grandmother who fed Henri Pierre to the Cabinet of Earths, long ago when he was only four. Don’t misunderstand! It happened like this.

The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet.

5. When an Irish lad named Frank Browne was seventeen, his uncle Robert gave him a camera. Frank fell in love with photography and before long he was snapping that shutter everywhere he went.

Titanic :Voices from The Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson

Titanic was a finalist for the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award for most distinguished informational book for children, and the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults:

6. MR. BENNETT WALKED into room 212 carrying a plastic bag. He smoothed his sweatshirt that read DEATH TO STEREOTYPES, tucked Claus his rubber chicken under his arm, raised one eyebrow, and jumped on his desk. He opened the bag, lifted a loaf of bread into the air and shouted, “Sell it to me.”

Almost Home by Joan Bauer

7. I AM A COWARD. I wanted to be heroic and I pretended I was. I have always been good at pretending. I spent the first twelve years of my life playing at the battle of Stirling Bridge with my five big brothers, and even though I am a girl the let me be William Wallace, who is supposed to be one of our ancestors, because I did the most rousing battle speeches. God, I tried hard last week. My God, I tried. But now I know I am a coward. After the ridiculous deal I made with SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer von Linden, I know I am a coward. And I'm going to give you anything you ask, everything I can remember. Absolutely every last detail.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

8. ONE WEEK BEFORE OUR SENIOR YEAR of high school begins, Erin's wearing her basketball practice jersey and I can see her black sports bra through the armhole, which is sort of sexy, at least to me.

Boy 21 by Matthew Quick

9.    I wake up.

Immediately I have to figure out who I am. It’s not just the body-opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arm is light or dark, whether my hair is long or short, whether I’m fat or thin, boy or girl, scarred or smooth. The body is the easiest thing to adjust to, if you’re used to waking up in a new one each morning. It’s the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.

Every Day By David Levithan

10. “I’m going to whack a duck,” said Bink 

Bink and Gollie, Two for One By Kate diCamillo and Allison McGhee, illustrated by Tony Fucile

For me, that's a great first line. I want to read this one.
HAPPY READING AND WRITING!

December 2011 - First Lines

by Susan Berger

I am visiting Kailua on Oahu and I spent a few hours at the library there gathering first lines.

This is not the Library 

Two of these lines are from nominees for the 2012 Nene award. The Nēnē Award is an annual award given by Hawai‘i’s children for the best children’s fiction book. Students in grades 4, 5 and 6 vote. Here is the link to this year's nominees.

I was delighted to see Carolyn Hennesy's book Pandora Gets Jealous on the list. Pen and Ink interviewed Carolyn earlier this year.

Ka'ula, a prospective Nene voter. 

Enjoy these lines and I will post answers and links to the books in a couple of weeks.

1) I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen. 

2) The hat in question was owned by Mrs. Constance Lovestock. Mrs. Lovestock was a woman of some years, even greater means and no children. She was not a woman who did things by half measures. Take her positions on swans. She thought them the most beautiful, graceful creatures in the world. 

3) "PLAY BALL!" called the home plate umpire of Ebbets Field. It was Major League Baseball's Opening Day - April 15, 1947. The Brooklyn Dodgers were playing the Boston Braves. 

4) It was one the most important moments in Nathaniel Fludd's young life and he was stuck sitting in the corner. 

5) HOW TO COOK AND EAT CHILDREN 

A cautionary Tale by the Witch Fay Holaderry 

I love children. Eating them, that is. 

6) Ah Kee hummed as he carried his basket of guavas. Today was his birthday and Ma was taking him to the market. 

7) Maybe you know. The feeling of how junk it is when summer ends.

8) Around 5:00 a.m. on a warm summer morning in October, 1953, my Aunt Belle left her bed and vanished from the face of the earth.

9) Even as a little girl I had thought that the swamp was a magical place where new lives began and old lives ended, where enemies and heroes weren't always what one expected, and where anything could happen, even to a clumsy princess. 

10) There was once an old and somewhat wise woman whom everyone called Grandy. She’d just suffered a big loss in her life. Pops, her husband, suffered the same loss, but in his own way. This is the story of how Grandy faced her loss by setting out to make tear soup.

Answers to Last Group of First Line/Paragraphs

by Susan Berger

These are the answers to the last group of first line/paragraphs. Eight of them are first books. (I thought it was nine, but I got fooled by the N.E. Bode bio)

1 Fern Drudger knew her parents were dull. Ridiculously dull. Incredibly, tragically dull. 

The Anybodies by N.E. Bode Illustrated by Peter Ferguson
(First book in the series. Pen name for Juliana Baggott) 

2. October 19th 1998 3:30PM
A dripping faucet.
Crumbs and a pink stain on the counter.
Half of a skin black banana that smells as old as it looks.
If I look at these things and at nothing else, concentrate on them and stay still, and don’t make any noise, this will be over soon and I can go home without Cameron’s dad ever knowing I’m here.
Sweethearts by Sara Zarr
(This book was a Cybil finalist. Sara was the Keynote speaker at the SCBWI winter Conference this year.) 

3. We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck. 

Feed by M.T. Anderson
(First book National Book Award finalist.) 

4. Crooked Creek Middle School Morning Announcement request
Feb 2
Mr. Cooper Please announce that today’s scheduled meeting of the American Society of Fun Facts has been cancelled because the club’s president is stuck in In-School Suspension . (thanks a lot)
The Defense of Thaddeus A Ledbetter by John Gosselink 

(First book)

5. 

The School of Fear 

The wilderness outside Farmington Massachusetts 

(exact location withheld for security purposes) 

Direct All correspondence to PO Box 333 

Farmington, MA 01201 

Dear Applicant,
I am pleased to inform you of your acceptance to the summer course at the School of Fear.
School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari
(This is a second book. Her first was The Makedown. I used a line from that in my last post. School of Fear will now be a four book series and a movie)

These next five are Cybil Finalists for mid grade fiction. I searched their list for first books. (Not easy.) There were more, but I couldn’t look inside the on Amazon 

6. I’d just been busted for giving the chimpanzees water balloons when I first heard something was wrong at Hippo River. 

(First book)
Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs 

7. Fiona Finkelstein had a bad feeling. It was the kind of bad feeling she got when she just knew Mrs. Miltenberger has packed a corned beef sandwich in her lunchbox, even thought she’s told her a gazillion times that she HATES corned beef more than she HATES anything else. Especially after learning that there was actually no corn in it. If there was one thing Fiona flat-out could not stand, it was food that lies. 

Fiona Finkelstein Meets Her Match by Shawn K. Stout.
(This is a second book) 

8. The first day of summer vacation is important because what you do that day sets the tone for the whole summer. That’s why my best friend Elliot Berger is coming over to watch the Daily Show episodes I’ve recorded. Mom and I used to watch them together. She always said that the host, Jon Stewart, stood up for the little guy, which is funny because Jon Stewart is a little guy-five feet seven inches. According to Wikipedia, the average height for men in the United States is five feet nine and a half inches. Let’s just say I can totally relate to Jon’s height issue.

How to Survive Middle School by Donna Gephart
(I think this is a first book.) 

9. You wake up and you’re fourteen. The world is your supersized soda waiting to be guzzled, right? Wrong. My birthday tasted more like Coke that went flat. 

Kimchi & Calimari by Rose Kent.
(First book. Nominated for several awards. Her second book was nominated for a Cybil) 

10. It’s a perfect night to run away, thought Fadi, casting a brooding look at the bright sheen of the moon through the cracked backseat window. It reminded him of the book From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler. 

Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai.
(First book. I would look this one up on Amazon and read the whole first page. It’s excellent.) 

Jan. 15, 2010

Dec. 5, 2009

Here some links to older first line posts. 

I think I will search the Cybils for YA for the next one.

Write on!

New First lines and/or Paragraphs

by Susan Berger
Here are some new First lines for your reading pleasure.
Sometimes, for me, the first line doesn't cut it. In that case, since I know the book was sold to an editor, I use the first paragraph.

1. Fern Drudger knew her parents were dull. Ridiculously dull. Incredibly, tragically dull.

2. October 19th 1998 3:30PM
A dripping faucet.
Crumbs and a pink stain on the counter.
Half of a skin black banana that smells as old as it looks.
If I look at these things and at nothing else, concentrate on them and stay still, and don’t make any noise, this will be over soon and I can go home without Cameron’s dad ever knowing I’m here.

3. We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.

4. Crooked Creek Middle School Morning Announcement request Feb 2
Mr. Cooper Please announce that today’s scheduled meeting of the American Society of Fun Facts has been cancelled because the club’s president is stuck in In-School Suspension . (thanks a lot)

5.

The School of Fear

The wilderness outside Farmington Massachusetts

(exact location withheld for security purposes)

Direct All correspondence to PO Box 333

Farmington, MA 01201

Dear Applicant,
I am pleased to inform you of your acceptance to the summer course at the School of Fear.

These next five are Cybil Finalists for mid grade fiction. I searched their list for books by first time authors. (Not easy.) There were more, but I only chose the ones where I could find the first line on Amazon.

6. I’d just been busted for giving the chimpanzees water balloons when I first heard something was wrong at Hippo River.

7. Fiona Finkelstein had a bad feeling. It was the kind of bad feeling she got when she just knew Mrs. Miltenberger has packed a corned beef sandwich in her lunchbox, even thought she’s told her a gazillion times that she HATES corned beef more than she HATES anything else. Especially after learning that there was actually no corn in it. If there was one thing Fiona flat-out could not stand, it was food that lies.

8. The first day of summer vacation is important because what you do that day sets the tone for the whole summer. That’s why my best friend Elliot Berger is coming over to watch the Daily Show episodes I’ve recorded. Mom and I used to watch them together. She always said that the host, Jon Stewart, stood up for the little guy, which is funny because Jon Stewart is a little guy-five feet seven inches. According to Wikipedia, the average height for men in the United States is five feet nine and a half inches. Let’s just say I can totally relate to Jon’s height issue.

9. You wake up and you’re fourteen. The world is your super sized soda waiting to be guzzled, right? Wrong. My birthday tasted more like Coke that went flat.

10. It’s a perfect night to run away, thought Fadi, casting a brooding look at the bright sheen of the moon through the cracked backseat window. It reminded him of the book From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler. (Interesting. This book by a first time author is nominated and it just broke a rule by mentioning another authors work in the first paragraph. Just shows you. Rules were made to be broken.)
The answers will be in my next post.

Happy reading and writing!

Here are links some older First Line posts


These lines came from Writers Day and were posted 5/2/10



Answers posted 5/31/10

 

There are the answers to

May 2nd post, posted 5/10/10 

 

Answers: First lines from First Picture Books

by Susan Berger

These are the answers from the last first line post in December 2010. I was looking for first books. I wanted to see the first lines that attracted the editor to a new author.

1. Nestled in the soft earth beside the path you see a yellow spider.

Dreamweaver by Jonathan London, Illustrated by Rocco Baviera

2. Everything was just dandy till that Emily Post book showed up.

Thanks a LOT, Emily Post! by Jennifer Larue Huget, Illustrated by Alexandra Boiger (First book)

 

3. The jungle was quiet.

Suraj, the tiger cub wondered why.

Then Rassi arrived and gave him the news.

Suraj, the Tiger Cub: by Farida Mirza. Not yet published

4. My friend Lincoln says you have two dads. That’s right poppa and daddy.

A Tale of Two Daddies by Vanita Oelschlager Iluustated by Kristin Blackwood and Mike Blane

5. Everyone told Lily Hippo she was too loud.

Too Loud Lily by Sofie Laguna, Illustrated by Kerry Argent

6. Beep Beep. Sheep in a jeep on a hill that’s steep

Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw, Illustrated by Margaret Apple (First Book)

7. Mama love to sing. Her singing was always a happy part of everyday life. But everything changed the day after my seventh birthday.

Floating on Mama’s Song by Laura Lacamara, Illustrated by Yuyi Morales (First book)

8. Pitter, patter

Plam, plam

On my window pane

The Way the Storm Stops by Michelle Meadow, illustrated by Rosanne Litzinger (First book) 

9. I took the moon for a walk last night.

I took the Moon for a walk by Carolyn Curtis, illustrated by Allison Jay. (First book)

 

10. Once upon a time Chicken Licken was standing around when a piece of something fell on her head.
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka, Iluustrated by Lane Smith.

(As best as I can determine, this was his first book. Wow!)




I will be posting new first lines soon They will include some Cybil nominees. In the meantime, here are links to the older First Line posts. Lots of good first lines in them there posts.

  

This was the first of the
First line posts  Nov 3, 2009

 

2nd first lines post Nov 9,2009.
(Oddly enough, I don't think I ever
posted an answer for these first lines.)

 





 

Dec 9. 2010 First Lines

December 15 2010 First lines

Happy Reading and Writing