Chasing Redbird

by Creech, Sharon

• ISBN13: 9780064406963
• ISBN10: 0064406962
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

It started out as an ordinary summer. But the minute thirteen-year-old Zinny covered the old, overgrown trail that ran through the woods behind her family's house, she realized that things were about to change. Right from the start, Zinny knew that uncovering the trail would be more than just a summer project. It was her chance to finally make people notice her, and to have a place she could call her very own. But more than that, Zinny knew that the trail somehow held the key to all kinds of questions. And that- the only way to understand her family, her Aunt Jessie's death, and herself, was to find out where it went. From the author of the Newbery Medal-winning Walk Two Moons, here is an intricately woven tale of a young girl who sets out in search of her place in the world -- and discovers it in her own backyard.

Table of Contents

Tangled Spaghetti	1	(2)
The Quiet Zone	3	(5)
Sinking	8	(2)
One-Day Special	10	(5)
Resolutions	15	(4)
Tadpoles and Pumpkins	19	(5)
The Trail	24	(9)
Bottle Caps	33	(8)
Back in the Drawer	41	(5)
The Mission	46	(8)
Presents	54	(8)
The Birds, the Rose, and the Turtle	62	(9)
Bingo	71	(5)
Gobbler	76	(9)
Lost and Found	85	(9)
Boogie-woogie	94	(2)
Trespassing	96	(6)
Proof	102	(2)
Accused	104	(10)
Beady Eyes	114	(3)
Wanted	117	(4)
The Fence	121	(6)
Don't Blame Me	127	(4)
The Horse	131	(3)
A Plan	134	(8)
Provisions	142	(7)
Alone	149	(9)
Baby in the Bag	158	(7)
Glimpses	165	(5)
Homecoming	170	(6)
Dag-blasted Body	176	(7)
A Beaut	183	(4)
The Old Lady	187	(2)
Even a Monkey . . .	189	(8)
Leaving	197	(6)
Discovered	203	(6)
Spook Hollow	209	(4)
Bear Alley	213	(6)
Lost	219	(4)
Get That Horse	223	(6)
The Ride	229	(7)
The Cabin	236	(5)
Drawers	241	(4)
Petunia	245	(6)
Chicory	251	(7)
The Chase	258

Excerpts

Chasing Redbird

Chapter One

Tangled Spaghetti

Worms dangled in Aunt Jessie's kitchen: red worms swarming over a lump of brown mud in a bowl. The bowl and the worms and the lump of mud were in a cross-stitched picture hanging above the stove.

When I learned to read, I made out these words in blue letters beneath the bowl: Life is a bowl of spaghetti ... Those worms weren't worms; they were spaghetti. I imagined myself rummaging among the twisted strands of pasta. That was my life?

There were more words: ... every now and then you get a meatball. That mud was a meatball! I saw that meatball as a tremendous bonus you might unearth in all those convoluted spaghetti strands of your life. It was something to look forward to, a reward for all that slogging through your pasta.

In my thirteen years, I've had meatballs, and I've had lumps of mud, too.

My name is Zinny (for Zinnia) Taylor. I live with a slew of brothers and sisters and my parents on a farm in Bybanks, Kentucky. Our house fits snug up against Uncle Nate and Aunt Jessie's, the two houses yoked together like one. Sometimes it seems too crowded on our side, and you don't know who you are. You feel like everybody's spaghetti is all tangled in one pot.

Last spring I discovered a trail at the back of our property -- an old trail, overgrown with grass and weeds. I knew instantly that it was mine and mine alone. What I didn't know was how long it was or how hard it would be to uncover the whole thing, or that it would turn into such an obsession, that I'd be as driven as a chickeneating dog in a henhouse.

This trail was just like the spaghetti of me and my family, of Uncle Nate and Aunt Jessie, and of Jake Boone. It took a heap of doing to untangle it.

Chasing Redbird. Copyright © by Sharon Creech. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Chasing Redbird by Sharon Creech
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.