Ruby Holler

by Creech, Sharon

• ISBN13: 9780060560157
• ISBN10: 0060560150
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-16
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Dallas and Florida, dubbed the "trouble twins," have been shuffled between foster families all their lives. Filled with humor and poignancy, this delightful book by the Newbery Medalist is about a special place where it's never too late to be loved.

Author Biography

Sharon Creech is the author of the Newbery Medal winner Walk Two Moons and the Newbery Honor winner The Wanderer. Her other novels include Love that Dog, Bloomability, Absolutely Normal Chaos, Chasing Redbird, and Pleasing the Ghost. She is also the author of two picture books, A Fine, Fine School and Fishing in the Air. After spending eighteen years teaching and writing in Europe, Sharon Creech and her husband have returned to the United States to live

Table of Contents

The Silver Bird	p. 1
The Boxton Creek Home	p. 4
Ruby Holler	p. 12
Mush	p. 14
Thinking Corners	p. 21
The Opportunity	p. 25
Doubts	p. 31
Hansel and Gretel	p. 34
The God	p. 41
The Egg	p. 43
The Grump	p. 48
Work	p. 50
Gravy	p. 54
Wood	p. 67
Conversations in the Night	p. 73
The Axe	p. 81
The Rocker	p. 86
The Trepids	p. 90
Understone Funds	p. 95
Through the Holler	p. 101
Lost and Found	p. 105
A Trip to Boxton	p. 112
Ready	p. 120
Tiller and Sairy	p. 127
The Holler at Night	p. 133
Shack Talk	p. 145
Trials	p. 148
Mrs. Trepid	p. 157
Decisions	p. 161
Nightmares	p. 166
Medicine	p. 168
Paddling and Hiking	p. 172
Z's Report	p. 179
Bearings	p. 184
Stiff	p. 188
A Long Chain	p. 192
Word Pictures	p. 195
Surveying	p. 197
The Worrywarts	p. 199
Babies in the Box	p. 206
Shopping	p. 212
Dorkhead	p. 218
Loops	p. 220
Progress	p. 224
The Rock	p. 226
Stones in the Holler	p. 229
Running	p. 231
More Shopping	p. 232
Underwater	p. 239
The Feeling	p. 241
Z	p. 247
The One-Log Raft	p. 251
The Dunces	p. 253
Slow Motion	p. 257
On the Road	p. 259
On the River	p. 264
The Soggy Heart	p. 268
Preparations	p. 271
Investments	p. 275
Hospital Talk	p. 278
Mr. Trepid's Adventure	p. 282
Jewels	p. 287
Mission-Accomplished Cake	p. 291
Appraisals	p. 294
Conversations in the Night	p. 298
Dreams	p. 306
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Ruby Holler

Chapter One

The Silver Bird

Dallas leaned far out of the window, his eyes fixed on a bird flying lazily in the distance. Sun slanted through the clouds above, as if a spotlight were aimed on the bird.

A silver bird, Dallas thought. A magical silver bird.

The bird turned suddenly, veering south over the small town of Boxton, toward the faded yellow building and the window from which Dallas leaned. Dallas stretched his arm out. “Here!” he called. “Over here!”

The bird swooped toward him and then rose up over the building, high, high into the air, over the alley and the train tracks and the dried-up creek. Dallas watched it rise on the air currents over one brown hill and then another, until it disappeared.

He tried to follow it in his mind. He imagined it flying on until it spied a narrow green valley, a scooped-out basin with a creek looping and winding its way through the center. He pictured it swooping down from the sky into this basin in the hills, to this place where cool breezes drifted through the trees, and where the creek was so clear that every stone on its bottom was visible.

Maybe the silver bird had flown home.

“Get out of that window!” a voice shouted from below. “No leaning out of windows!”

Dallas leaned a little farther out and called down to Mr. Trepid. “Did you see that silver bird?”

“Get out of that window, or you're going to join your sister down here pulling weeds,” Mr. Trepid threatened.

Dallas spotted his sister, Florida, inching her way along the sidewalk, wrenching clumps of weeds and grass and dirt from the ground.

“Putrid weeds,” Florida snarled, heaving a clod of dirt over her shoulder.

Dallas watched as the clod landed on Mr. Trepid's back and as the man scuttled over to Florida and whacked her on the head. Dallas wished the silver bird would return and snare Mr. Trepid and carry him high up over the town and then drop him, splat, in the middle...

Ruby Holler. 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 Ruby Holler 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.