Her father said she was a princess. He did not see that she was a brave knight.

This is what it is to live in the world. You have to give yourself over to the cold, at least a little bit.

Fiercely original and uncommonly lovely, The Witch's Boy is equal parts enchanting and haunting. Kelly Barnhill is master of truly potent and unruly magic; luckily for readers, she chooses to use her powers for good.

She understood. They were plastic flowers of words—but they looked nice on the surface.

Kids can handle a lot more than you think they can. It's when they get to be grown up that you have to start worrying.

People feared snowstorms once. Hazel read about this all the time. Pioneers opened their front doors and saw they'd been entombed in snow overnight. They walked across malevolent swirling whiteness and did not know if they would survive. Nature can destroy us in a blink. We live on only at its pleasure. That was what looking at the witch was like.

This morning, as Charlotte approached the brick facade of Hartnett, she found herself overcome with a great sense of dread. It hit her with a strange and sudden force, and she had an overwhelming urge to turn back, get into bed and not go out for about three weeks. She stopped in her tracks. The feeling itself was alarming to Charlotte - was she sensing something? Something dangerous? And was it something supernatural or just middle school? Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.