Don't you just love being enraptured in a book to the point that you know pure gold is waiting for you at the end of the day, or whenever you can steal a few minutes to read? I'm going through that now with Haven Kimmel's Memoir A Girl Named Zippy. Kimmel lives in the Triangle and has agreed to do another fundraiser for the Orange County Literacy Council this summer, so I decided it was high time I see for myself what all the hype was about. Here's a made-me-laugh-out-loud-wish-I-could-write-like-this-passage from page 222:
Mrs. O'Dell was conferring with Mrs. Denver in a loud whisper. Mrs. O'Dell's dentures weren't the most seamless fit, and sometimes she looked like she was grimacing when in fact she just couldn't get her lips all the way down, and sometimes when she talked it looked like the left side of her dentures were about to get away. Plus when she got excited she thrust her head forward like a turtle, and today everything was going wrong at once. She was spitting and her dentures were flapping and her head was bobbing around at about the level of her chest, and the total effect of it caused me to forget to listen to what she was saying. Soon other students began to arrive, and it was time to start another day of fourth grade.
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2 comments:
I love Haven Kimmel. That book has a good sequel, too -- I envy you that you have all that to look forward to. One part I loved from the Zippy book is when she's talking about being a baby and for some reason in pictures she has dark circles under her eyes, and she says "as if I were holding down the swing shift at the tire factory in addition to my regular duties as baby". For some reason that just slayed me.
Just finished up Zippy last night and can't wait to read "She Got Up Off the Couch." I, too, love that baby quote.
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