Mrs Minish came into the room. I went up to her. ‘Mrs Minish…somebody moved my desk.’

‘Oh… the custodian is always moving desks around when he sweeps.’

‘Can I move it back where it belongs?’

Mrs Minish looked around the classroom. ‘Why don’t you move it next to Donna Davidson’s… there’s a space over there.’

I went to my desk, stood the chair on top of it, and pushed it across the room, next to Donna’s desk.

When I did, she moved hers away and whispered, ‘Who wants to sit next to B.B.’ When it was time for gym, Mr Witneski chose Bruce and Linda for the captains. Linda picked Wendy first. I waited and waited but nobody chose me for a team. When I was the only one left Linda told Bruce, ‘You get B.B.’ And all the kids on Bruce’s team moaned.

I’ll show them, I thought. I’ll show them all. I will play so good I’ll kick ten home runs.

But I didn’t. I kicked three fly balls right to Wendy and each time I did, my team said, ‘What can you expect from B.B.?’

At lunch I found out that B.B. means Baby Brenner. It could have been worse. Wendy put a diaper pin on my desk with a note attached to it.

Baby Brenner better change her diapers.
She’s smelling up the whole room!

After I read the note I said, ‘Ha Ha…’ remembering that my mother told me that a person should always be able to laugh at herself. I tried to laugh as hard as the rest of the kids to show what a good sport I could be.

‘Goo goo…’ Robby Winters said. ‘See Baby Brenner laugh!’ He sounded like he was reading from a first grade book.

‘See Baby Brenner eat!’ Caroline said.

‘Baby Brenner eats only mushy-gushy foods like peanut better,’ Wendy told everyone, ‘because Baby Brenner can’t chew big people’s food yet.’

I didn’t finish my lunch.

That afternoon, when I got on the bus, Wendy stuck out her foot and tripped me. I fell flat on my face and my books flew all over the place. I tried to laugh again but this time the laugh just wouldn’t come. Tracy helped me up, collected my books, and led me to the seat she’d been saving.

‘See Baby Brenner!’ Wendy shouted. ‘Baby Brenner hasn’t learned to walk yet.’

Extract from the book Blubber
By Judy Blume
All Rights Reserved.
London : Macmillan Children’s, 2012
Call Number: ENGLISH J BLU
Extract contributed by Grace Sim, Librarian, Public Library Services

Recommended Reads
Available at NLB

Title: How to Beat The Bully Without Really Trying
By: Scott Starkey
Call Number: J STA

Title: Super Emma
By Sally Warner
Call Number: J WAR

Title: The New Girl
By: Meg Cabot
Call Number: J CAB

What would you do if you were the victim of bullying?

I think I was smiling. Maybe I was beaming, I don’t know. As I walked up the aisle toward the stage, all I saw was a blur of happy bright faces looking at me, and hands clapping for me. And I heard people yelling out things out at me: “You deserve it, Auggie!” “Good for you, Auggie!” I saw all my teachers in the aisle seats, Mr. Browne and Ms. Petosa and Mr. Roche and Mrs. Atanabi and Nurse Molly and all the others: and they were cheering for me, woo-hooing and whistling.

I felt like I was floating. It was so weird. Like the sun was shining full force on my face and the wind was blowing. As I got closer to the stage, I saw Ms. Rubin waving at me in the front row, and then next to her was Mrs. G, who was crying hysterically – a happy crying – smiling and clapping the whole time. And as I walked up the steps to the stage, the most amazing thing happened: everyone started standing up. Not just the front rows, but the whole audience suddenly got to their feet, whooping, hollering, clapping like crazy. It was standing ovation. For me.

I walked across the stage to Mr. Tushman, who shook my hand with both his hands and whispered in my ear: “Well done, Auggie.” Then he placed the gold medal over my head, just like they do in the Olympics, and had me turn to face the audience. It felt like I was watching myself in a movie, almost, like I was someone else. It was like that last scene in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope when Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca are being applauded for destroying the Death Star. I could almost hear the Star Wars theme music playing in my head as I stood on the stage.

I wasn’t even sure why I was getting this medal, really.

No, that’s not true. I knew why.

It’s like people you see sometimes, and you can’t imagine what it would be like to be that person, whether it’s somebody in a wheelchair or somebody who can’t talk. Only, I know that I’m that person to other people, maybe to every single person in that whole auditorium.

To me, though, I’m just me. An ordinary kid.

But hey, if they want to give me a medal for being me, that’s okay. I’ll take it. I didn’t destroy a Death Star or anything like that, but I did just get through the fifth grade. And that’s not easy, even if you’re not me.

Extract from the book Wonder
By R.J. Palacio
All Rights Reserved.
London: Bodley Head, 2012
Call Number: ENGLISH J PAL
Extract contributed by Yock Hwee Fang, Librarian, Public Library Services

Recommended Reads
Available at NLB

Title: One for the Murphys
By Lynda Mullaly Hunt.
Call Number: J HUN

Title: The Fault In Our Stars
By John Green
Call Number: J GRE

Title: Remarkable: A Novel
By Lizzie K. Foley
Call Number: J FOL

Do you have experiences when you were so good that you won an award, only to find the entire experience of getting your prize unreal? And were you extraordinarily proud of yourself for what you had achieved or did you feel that you were just you?

A great clamour rose among the savages. Piggy shouted again.

‘Which is better – to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?’

Again the clamour and again – ‘Zup!’

Ralph shouted against the noise.

‘Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?’

Now Jack was yelling too and Ralph could no longer make himself heard. Jack had backed right against the tribe and they were a solid mass of menace that bristled with spears. The intention of a charge was forming among them; they were working up to it and the neck would be swept clear. Ralph stood facing them, a little to one side, his spear ready. By him stood Piggy still holding out the talisman, the fragile, shining beauty of the shell. The storm of sound beat at them, an incantation of hatred. High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever.

Ralph heard the great rock long before he saw it. He was aware of a jolt in the earth that came to him through the soles of his feet, and the breaking sound of stones at the top of the cliff. Then the monstrous red thing bounded across the neck and he flung himself flat while the tribe shrieked.

The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, travelled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy’s arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig’s after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone.

This time the silence was complete. Ralph’s lips formed a word but no sound came.

Suddenly Jack bounded out from the tribe and began screaming wildly.

‘See? See? That’s what you’ll get! I meant that! There isn’t a tribe for you any more! The conch is gone –‘

He ran forward, stooping.

‘I’m Chief!’

Viciously, with full intention, he hurled his spear at Ralph.

Extract from the book Lord of the Flies
By William Golding
All Rights Reserved.
London : Faber and Faber Limited, 2011, c1954
Call Number: English GOL
Extract contributed by Eunice Chen, Associate Librarian, Public Library Services

Recommended Reads
Available at NLB

Title: Nineteen eighty-four
By George Orwell
Call Number: English ORW

Title: Fahrenheit 451
By Ray Bradbury
Call Number: English BRA

Title: The Lottery and Other Stories
By Shirley Jackson
Call Number: English JAC

With the absence of rules and reinforcement, do you think man would degenerate into baser beings? Why or why not? How about even if rules exist?

Nicholas was relieved to hear that Mr Fender had decided to let him remain at the school for a further trial period, provided he followed Miss Murajee’s advice, but the events of the morning had disturbed him more than he cared to admit. In his mind’s eye he could still see the mountain lion walking towards Fiona and Mr Daimon. Suppose that had happened while Miss Murajee was not there? What would he have done? The idea that his friend could have been badly hurt, and that it would have been his fault if she were, was not a pleasant one.
When Miss Murajee had finished giving him her instructions on how he was to behave in school in future, he asked if there wasn’t anything else she could do.

‘Like what?’ asked Miss Murajee.

‘You said you were under a curse once, and you got rid of it. Isn’t there some way you can get rid of mine?’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do that.’ Then she smiled. ‘But cheer up. It could be worse!’

‘Could it?’ muttered Nicholas. ‘I don’t see how.’

‘Of course it could,’ said Miss Murajee briskly. ‘I know life’s not easy for you at the moment but that doesn’t mean you have to go around looking so miserable.’

‘I’m the unluckiest boy in the world,’ said Nicholas. ‘I don’t have a lot to be happy about.’

‘We don’t need reasons to be happy,’ said Miss Murajee firmly. ‘Happiness isn’t something that happens to you, it’s a decision. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and start smiling.’ She took out a card and gave it to him. ‘That’s my number. Any time you need me, give me a call.’

Extract from the book The unluckiest boy in the world
By Andrew Norriss
All Rights Reserved.
London : Puffin, 2006
Call Number: J English NOR
Extract contributed by Chan Pan Fong, Librarian, Public Library Services

Recommended Reads
Available at NLB
Title: Something Invisible
By: Siobhan Parkinson
Call Number: J English PAR

Title: Lucky Star
By: Cathy Cassidy
Call Number: J English CAS

Title: Sammy Feral’s diaries of weird
By: Eleanor Hawken
Call Number: J English HAW

Who holds the key to your happiness?

They began to know the hours when certain trains passed, and they gave names to them. The 9.15 up was called the Green Dragon. The 10.7 down was called the Work of Wantley.
…
It was one morning as they say on the fence waiting for the Green Dragon, which was three and a quarter minutes late by Peter’s Waterbury watch that he had had given him on his last birthday.

“The Green Dragon’s going there Father is,” said Phyllis, “if it were really real dragon, we could stop it and ask it to take our love to Father.”

“Dragons don’t carry people’s love,” said Peter, ‘”they’d be above it.”

“Yes. They do, if you tame them thoroughly first. They fetch and carry like pet spaniels,” said Phyllis, “and feed out of your hand. I wonder why father never writes to us.”

“Mother says he’s been too busy,” said Bobbie; “but he’ll write soon, she says.”

“I say,” Phyllis suggested, “let’s all wave to the Green Dragon as it goes by. If it’s magic dragon, it’ll understand and take our loves to Father. And if it isn’t, three waves aren’t much. We shall never miss them.”

So when the Green Dragon tore shrieking out of the mouth of its dark hair, which was the tunnel, all three children stood on the railing and waved their pocket-handkerchiefs without stopping to think whether they were clean handkerchiefs or the reverse. They were, as a matter of fact, very much the reverse.

And out of a first-class carriage a hand waved back. A quite clean hand. It held a newspaper. It was the old gentleman’s hand.

After this it became the custom for waves to be exchanged between the children and 9.15.

And the children, especially the girls, liked to think that perhaps the old gentleman knew Father, and would meet him ‘in business’ wherever the shady retreat might be, and tell him how the three children stood on a rail far away in the green country and waved their love to him every morning, wet or fine.

Extract from the book The Railway Children
By E.Nesbit
All Rights Reserved.
London: Vintage Books, 2012
Call Number: J English NES

Recommended Reads
Available at NLB

Title: The silver horse
By Forsyth, Kate
Call Number: Y English CHO

Title: Midwinter nightingale
By Aiken, Joan
Call Number: J English AIK

Title: A long way from Chicago: a novel in stories
By Peck, Richard
Call Number: J English PEC

To what extent would you go to contact your loved ones if they go missing?

“You know how Leonardo invented all those crazy things, like submarines and helicopters and hang gliders?” Tommy said, and Luke looked over at him, guessing what he was going to say next. “I’ve just been thinking that maybe he didn’t invent them at all. Maybe he saw them.”

“You mean he travelled to the future?” Ms. Sheck said.

“Yeah.”

Luke nodded; he’d been thinking exactly the same thing. “He saw some of these things and went back and tried to design them, but using fifteenth-century technology.”

There were murmuring voices and footsteps in the corridor outside their cell. Luke glanced up to see Mueller and Mumbo walk past the barred gate.

Each of them wore the black uniform of a 1940s German SS officer.

“They’re getting ready to leave,” Luke said.

On a trip like no other, he thought. A journey back to World War II.

“We’ve got to stop them,” Ms. Sheck said.

“How?”, Luke asked, looking at the thick bars of the gate.

“I don’t know how, but we have to. The Nazis came very close to inventing an atomic bomb in the 1940s,” Ms. Sheck said. “With Mueller’s plans, they will succeed, and they will win the war.”

“We’ll be Nazis,” Tommy said glumly.

“I don’t think so,” Luke said. “I don’t think we’ll exist.”

Tommy looked up sharply.

“Well,” Luke said, “if you change history that much, you’ll change everything. Your grandparents might never meet. Your parents won’t be born. So you will never be born. Same for everyone else we know. It’ll be a completely different world, with different people in it.”

Luke examined the gate again. Surely there had to be some way to get out. But it looked solid, if brown and rusted, and it still looked just as locked. It was secured with a heavy-duty modern brass padlock.

Maybe with Tommy’s lock pick they might have had a chance, but that was in his backpack. And the Werewolves
had that.

“If we could not get out of here,” Luke asked Ms. Sheck, “what would we do?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But if they get back to the 1940s with those plans, then that’s the end of everything.”

Extract from the book The Project
By Brian Falkner
All Rights Reserved.
New York: Random House, c2010.

Call Number: Y English FAL

Extract contributed by Wen Di, Librarian, Public Library Services

Recommended Reads (time travel fiction)
Available at NLB

Title: 11/22/63: a novel
By Stephen King
Call Number: English KIN

Title: Stravaganza : city of secrets
By Mary Hoffman
Call Number: Y English HOF

Title: Nick of time
By Ted Bell
Call Number: Y English BEL

If you have a chance to travel back in time and alter something in history, will you do it, and why?

]]> http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/on-a-trip-like-no-other/feed/ 3 http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/you-are-really-a-good-girl/ http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/you-are-really-a-good-girl/#comments Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:06:44 +0000 averil http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/?p=1356 ]]> Image: All Rights Reserved, Tokyo; London: Kodansha International c1996

“You are really a good girl, you know.”

That’s what the headmaster used to say every time he saw Totto-chan. And every time he said it, Totto-chan would smile, give a little skip, and say, “Yes, I am a good girl.” And she believed it.

Totto-chan was, indeed, a good girl in many ways. She was kind to everyone—particularly her physically handicapped friends. She would defend them, and, if children from other schools said cruel things, she would fight the tormentors, even if it ended with her crying. She would do everything to care for any injured animals she found. But at the same time her teachers were continually astonished at the amount of trouble she always got into as she tried to satisfy her curiosity whenever she discovered anything unusual.

She would do things like making her pigtails stick out behind under each arm while marching to morning assembly. Once, when it was her turn to sweep the classroom, she opened a trapdoor her sharp eyes had noticed in the floor and put all the sweepings down the hole. It had originally been for inspecting the machinery when it was a real train. But she couldn’t get the trapdoor closed again, and caused everyone a lot of trouble. And then there was the time someone told her how meat was hung up on hooks, so she went and hung by one arm from the exercise bar. She hung there for ages, and when a teacher saw her and asked what she was doing, she shouted, “I’m a piece of meat today!” and just then she lost her hold and fell down so hard it just knocked all the wind out of her lungs and she couldn’t speak all day. Then, of course, there was that time when she jumped into the cesspool.

She was always doing things like that and hurting herself, but the headmaster never sent for Mother and Daddy. It was the same with other children. Matters were settled between the headmaster and the child concerned. Just as he had listened to Totto-chan for four hours the day she first arrived at the school, he always listened to what a child had to say about an incident caused. He even listened to their excuses. And if the child had done something really bad and eventually recognized it was wrong, the headmaster would say, “Now apologize.”

In Totto-chan’s case, complaints and fears voiced by children’s parents and other teachers undoubtedly reached the ears of the headmaster. That’s why, whenever he had a chance, he would say to Totto-chan, “You’re really good girl, you know.” A grown-up, hearing him said it, would have realized the significance of the way he emphasized the word “really.”

What the headmaster must have wanted to make Totto-chan understand was something like this: Some people may think you’re not a good girl in many respects, but your real character is not bad. It has a great deal that is good about it, and I am well aware of that.” Alas, it was many, many years before Totto-chan realized what he really meant.

Extract from the book Totto-chan: the little girl at the window
By Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
All Rights Reserved.
Tokyo; London: Kodansha International, 1996

Extract contributed by Shirley Lim, Librarian, Public Library Services

Recommended Reads (if you enjoy books about inspirational educators)
Available at NLB

Title: Teacher man: a memoir
By Frank McCourt
Call Number: English 371.10092 MAC

Title: Ms. Hempel chronicles
By Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Call Number: English BYN

Title: A lesson before dying
By Ernest J. Gaines
Call Number: English GAI

Do you have any teachers who have particularly inspired you? How so?

]]> http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/you-are-really-a-good-girl/feed/ 2 http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/rules-for-working-in-a-white-lady%e2%80%99s-house/ http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/rules-for-working-in-a-white-lady%e2%80%99s-house/#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:54:57 +0000 averil http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/?p=1346 ]]> Image: All Rights Reserved, New York: Amy Einhorn Books c2009

“Sit down on your behind, Minny, because I’m about to tell you the rules for working in a White Lady’s house.”

I was fourteen years old to the day. I sat at the little wooden table in my mama’s kitchen eyeing that caramel cake on the cooling rack, waiting to be iced. Birthdays were the only day of the year I was allowed to eat as much as I wanted.

I was about to quit school to start my first real job. Mama wanted me to stay on and go to ninth grade—she’d always wanted to be a school-teacher instead of working in Miss Woodra’s house. But with my sister’s heart problem and my no-good drunk daddy, it was up to me and Mama. I already knew about housework. After school, I did most of the cooking and the cleaning. But if I was going off to work in somebody else’s house, who’d be looking after ours?

Mama turned me by the shoulders so I’d look at her instead of the cake. Mama was a crack-whip. She was proper. She took nothing from nobody. She shook her finger so close to my face, it made me cross-eyed.
“Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody’s business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady’s problems, you don’t go crying to her with yours—you can’t pay the bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don’t want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me?

“Rule Number Two: don’t ever let that White Lady find you sitting on her toilet. I don’t care if you’ve got to go so bad it’s coming out of your hairbraids. If there’s not one out back for the help, you find yourself a time when she’s not there in a bathroom she doesn’t use.

“Rule Number Three—” Mama jerked my chin around to face her because that cake had lured me in again. “Rule Number Three: when you’re cooking white people’s food, you taste it with a different spoon. You put that spoon to your mouth, think nobody’s looking, put it back in the pot, might as well throw it out.

“Rule Number Four: You use the same cup, same fork, same plate every day. Keep it in a separate cupboard and tell that white woman that’s the one you’ll use from here on out.

“Rule Number Five: you eat in the kitchen.

“Rule Number Six: you don’t hit on her children. White people like to do their own spanking.

“Rule Number Seven: this is the last one, Minny. Are you listening to me? No sass-mouthing.”

“Mama, I know how—”

“Oh, I hear you when you think I can’t, muttering about having to clean the stovepipe, about the last piece of chicken left for poor Minny. You sass a white woman in the morning, you’ll be sassing out on the street in the afternoon.”

I saw the way my mama acted when Miss Woodra brought her home, all Yes Ma’aming, No Ma’aming, I sure do thank you Ma’aming. Why I got to be like that? I know how to stand up to people.

“Now come here and give your mama a hug on your birthday—Lord, you are heavy as a house, Minny.”

Extract from the book The Help
By Kathryn Stockett
All Rights Reserved.
New York: Amy Einhorn Books, c2009
Call No.: English STO

Extract contributed by Shirley Lim, Librarian, Public Library Services

Recommended Reads (Fiction with social commentary)
Available at NLB

Title: The queen of water
By: Laura Resau and Maria Virginia Farinango
Call Number: English RES

Title: The secret life of bees
By: Sue Monk Kidd
Call Number: English KID – [MO]

Title: The queen of Palmyra
By: Minrose Gwin
Call Number: English GWI

Why do you think some people have discriminations against others?

]]> http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/rules-for-working-in-a-white-lady%e2%80%99s-house/feed/ 6 http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/overbearing-or-underbearing-parent/ http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/overbearing-or-underbearing-parent/#comments Thu, 30 Aug 2012 05:39:38 +0000 averil http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/?p=1341 ]]> Image: All Rights Reserved, New York : Walker & Co. c2012

I walked down to the kitchen. “Can I borrow your car?” Mom tensed over the sink. The water continued dripping and water overflowed from the cups.

“The roads are still icy,” she said to the drain, “and you haven’t driven in a while. And with your ribs, your range of motion may be decreased.”

I twisted gently back and forth, but she wasn’t looking. “Want me to do a back bend?” Not that I could. Actually, I was probably fine as long as I didn’t do a back bend.

She placed her hands on opposite sides of the sink and looked upward. “I want you to live.”

“I am. Look, I’ll be really careful. I’ll drive under the speed limit. Promise I won’t die.”

Mom turned to look at me, her face pale, her worry lines pronounced. “I’m not sure which way will guarantee I won’t lose you. Overbearing or underbearing.”

“That’s not a word,” I said, because I don’t know what else to say.

“My father,” she began. She cleared her throat and started again. “My father was overbearing. That’s what your dad is worried about.” She looked out the side window. “But my mother, she was underbearing. She didn’t care. And that was worse.” She ran her hand along the edge of the countertop.

“Mom—” I tried to stop her because it turned out I didn’t really want to know. I didn’t want to hear it.

“Your dad thinks I left home because of my father. He was awful, it’s true. He’d lose it over the smallest thing—the way I emptied the dishwasher, the way I left clothes hanging over the end of the hamper, anything. It was hell.” I looked around the kitchen, so perfect, so orderly, and saw something else besides cleanliness. Compulsion. Fear. She continued, “But that’s not why I left. It was my mother. She watched, she did nothing, she didn’t defend me, she didn’t take me and leave. She was just complicit. And that was far, far worse.”

We didn’t speak for a long time, just listened to the water collect in the sink and escape down the drain in spurts.

“Maybe you should aim for something in between.”

“That’s what I used to do, and look what happened,” she said. She turned back to the sink and picked up the sponge. And then, “Be back in time for church.”

She seemed calm when she said it, but on my way out the door, I heard her rummaging frantically around the kitchen.

Extract from the book Fracture
By Megan Miranda
All Rights Reserved.
New York : Walker & Co., 2012
Call No.: Y English MIR

Extract contributed by Ng Peck Hia, Associate Librarian, Public Library Services

Recommended Reads (Family Relationships)
Available at NLB

Title: Bitter melon
By Cara Chow
Call Number: Y English CHO

Title: Lock & key
By Sarah Dessen
Call Number: Y English DES

Title: Ginger bread
By Rachel Cohn
Call Number: Y English COH

Title: Total constant order
By Crissa-Jean Chappell
Call Number: Y English CHA

Have you ever felt that your parents are overbearing towards you?

]]> http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/overbearing-or-underbearing-parent/feed/ 6 http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/year-3004/ http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/year-3004/#comments Fri, 27 Jul 2012 07:19:25 +0000 averil http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/?p=1333 ]]> Image: All Rights Reserved, Brighton : Book Guild Pub. c2011

It wasn’t until they reached the bridge that is become apparent that there was a shield over this too and it was impossible to use the bridge to get across the river. Kayleb watched the swirling water flow freely through the arches of the bridge and he wondered how this could be. The river at this point was very wide and the water seemed to be deep. The current was extremely strong and Kayleb knew that the only way to continue their journey was to cross the river or walk around the settlement and the deserted city, adding hours to their journey. Kayleb wasn’t sure what they should do. David could be coming along the other side of the river at any moment, and he did not want to miss him if they had to take a diversion.

Rowan looked at the rippling water in awe. He thought that he might have a chance of swimming across but Kayleb, Cornwall and Indigo would not be strong enough swimmers. Rowan looked back down the river. He knew that they should go and tell David and the others that the village had some sort of plague but his overwhelming conviction was that they should continue on to London as they were, just the four of them.

‘I could try and swim across and see what the current is like,’ suggested Rowan. He saw the horrified look on everyone’s faces. ‘I don’t think it is bad as it looks,’ Rowan continued.

Kayleb shook his head. ‘You would probably drown, Rowan. The current is too strong and I don’t think Cornwall can swim.’

‘I can!’ replied Cornwall defensively. ‘But not that well’, she added.

The dog looked at the water eagerly, his long fur rippling in the breeze. He edged closer to the water’s edge and, before Kayleb could stop him, he leapt off the riverbank and plunged into the river.

Kayleb held his breath as he watched the dog paddle furiously, the swirling water buffeted the dog against the bridge’s shield. A couple of times the dog’s head disappeared below the surface of the river but the dog steadily worked his way across and then finally made it to the other side. Kayleb exhaled with relief.

‘Oh … that was close. I thought he was dead as a rhino then,’ exclaimed Kayleb.

The dog barked at them, encouraging them to join him. He shook the water from his fur and ran up and down the opposite riverbank, barking frantically.

‘I don’t think we can get across the river,’ said Indigo.

‘There is another crossing point.’

Kayleb, Rowan and Cornwall spun round to see a tall man approaching them. He had long dark hair and a short beard. He wore a clean white shirt and a black waistcoat. His face was scarred but he had a warm smile and Kayleb did not feel alarmed as he did not look like a ragged waster. The stranger’s manner wasn’t threatening in any way.

Rowan looked at the man anxiously. He did not want to get captured again. Panic shook his body and he felt he had to flee. The river was his only escape route. He threw himself into the river. The water was icy cold and took his breath away.

…

Kayleb, Cornwall and Indigo watched on in disbelief. They all looked at each other in despair. How could Rowan have been so stupid? He had seen the dog struggle to get across the river and it was a miracle that he had made it at all.

Extract from the book 3004
By Natasha Murray
All Rights Reserved.
Brighton : Book Guild Pub., 2011
Call No.: Y English MUR

Extract contributed by Kweh Soon Huat, Librarian, Public Library Services

Recommended Reads
Available at NLB

Title: My soul to save
By Rachel Vincent
Call Number: Y English VIN

Title: Trapped
By Michael Northrop
Call Number: Y English NOR

Title: Gone bad
By Lesley Choyce.
Call Number: Y English CHO

Have you or any of your friends made a rash decision that had everyone shocked? How can one avoid making rash decisions?

]]> http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/readandreap/general/year-3004/feed/ 0