I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready

Grandma, how old is she?" "Oh I don't know." Grandma said. "You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck.

That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.

But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move.

We write by the light of every story we have ever read.

I caught a glimpse of happiness, and saw it was a bird on a branch, fixing to take wing.

With the poetry of plain speaking, Shannon Hitchcock recreates the daily drama of a vanished world.