family relationships Quotes

“Mostly I thought of Mama. And when I first sat here, with my three-year-old boy beside me and the baby in my arms, it was Mama’s face I saw, Mama’s voice I heard, like it was yesterday.”

“He and Sonny hadn’t ever got on too well. And this was partly because Sonny was the apple of his father’s eye. It was because he loved Sonny so much and was frightened for him, that he was always fighting for him.”

“I stare at the floor and I wonder. How did they tolerate me.”

“Some people build fences to keep people out and other people build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to you all. She loves you.”

“He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancour that had divided him from mother and brother and sister. He felt that he was hardly of the one blood with them but stood to them rather in the mystical kinship of fosterage, fosterchild and fosterbrother.”

“She’s my daughter, Rose. My own flesh and blood. I can’t deny her no more than I can deny them boys. . . . You and them boys is my family. You and them and this child is all I got in the world. So I guess what I’m saying is . . . I’d appreciate it if you’d help me take care of her.”

“I gave everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn’t the finest man in the world. And wherever you was going . . . I wanted to be there with you. Because you was my husband. Cause that’s the only way I was gonna survive as your wife.”

“I took onto Raynell like she was all them babies I had wanted and never had. . . . Like I’d been blessed to relive a part of my life. And if the lord see fit to keep up my strength . . . I’m gonna do her just like your daddy did you . . . I’m gonna give her the best of what’s in me.”

“You can’t visit the sins of the father upon the child.”

“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t known my daddy. . . . But I’ll say this for him . . . he felt a responsibility toward us. Maybe he ain’t treated us the way I felt he should have . . . but without that responsibility he could have walked off and left us.”

“I married your daddy and settled down to cooking his supper and keeping clean sheets on the bed. When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave some room for me. . . . But at that time I wanted that.”

“It’s my responsibility! You understand that? A man got to take care of his family. You live in my house . . . sleep you behind on my bedclothes . . . fill you belly up with my food . . . cause you my son. You my flesh and blood. Not cause I like you! Cause it’s my duty to take care of you!”

“Whatever was between you and your daddy . . . the time has come to put it aside. Just take it and set it over there on the shelf and forget about it. Disrespecting your daddy ain’t going to make you a man, Cory. You got to find a way to come to that on your own.”

“aOh, I see . . . I don’t count here no more. You ain’t got to say excuse me to your daddy. All of a sudden you done got so grown that your daddy don’t count around here no more. . . . You done got so grown to where you gonna take over. . . . You gonna wear my pants.”

“Alright . . . Mr. Death. See now . . . I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take and build me a fence around this yard. See? I’m gonna build me a fence around what belongs to me. And then I want you to stay on the other side. See?”

“I cannot blame them, Catelyn thought. They do not know. And if they did, why should they care? They never knew my sons. Never watched Bran climb with their hearts in their throats, pride and terror so mingled they seemed as one, never heard him laugh, never smiled to see Rickon trying so fiercely to be like his older brothers.”

In a vague way he understood that his father was in trouble and that this was the reason why he himself had not been sent back to Clongowes. For some time he had felt the slight change in his house; and those changes in what he had deemed unchangeable were so many slight shocks to his boyish conception of the world.

“He waited for some moments, listening, before he too took up the air with them. He was listening with pain of spirit to the overtone of weariness behind their frail fresh innocent voices. Even before they set out on life’s journey they seemed weary already of the way.”

″ It was sobering to learn of a woman one generation removed who lived a life I can’t imagine or understand.”

“– Ah, it’s a scandalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother, and you’ll live to rue the day you set your foot in that place. I know how it has changed you.”

“Blood does not define family. Love does.”

“Only my grandmother knew about my book.”

“It’s important that you know. Our family memory must not be lost.”

“The basis of education comes from the family!”

“Her mother had already abandoned her. Since that day, I’ve had doubts about the so-called ‘maternal instinct.‘”

“When I lived with papa, he used to tell me what he thought about everything, so that I never had any opinions but his. And if I did have any of my own, I kept them quiet, because he wouldn’t have liked them. He called me his little doll, and he played with me just the way I played with my dolls.”

″‘I told him you were ready to be part of this family.’ ‘I’m ‘already’ part of this family. I’m like a charter member.‘”

“But when Eleanor walked in the house, it was like her siblings didn’t recognize her.”

“When we talk ... nothing is said. ... Communication is awful hard between people. ”

“In my culture, parents were sacred. We at least owed them an answer.”

“But it’s like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you’re just clutching air and grit.”

“She didn’t like America, but she didn’t hate it, either. Two and a half years and eight gazillion books later, she had Bird. Then we moved to Brooklyn.”

“Sister’s are supposed to fight and make up, because they are sisters and sisters always find their way back to each other.”

“There is a specific kind of fight you can only have with your sister. It’s the kind where you say things you can’t take back. You say them because you can’t help but say them, because you’re so angry it’s coming up in your throat and out your eyes; you’re so angry you can’t see straight. All you see is blood.”

“When his grandfather’s initial antagonism wore off, Benjamin and that gentleman took enormous pleasure in one another’s company. They would sit for hours, these two, so far apart in age and experience, and, like old cronies, discuss with tireless monotony the slow events of the day. Benjamin felt more at ease in his grandfather’s presence than in his parents’ – they seemed always somewhat in awe of him and, despite the dictatorial authority they exercised over him, frequently addressed him as ‘Mr.‘”

“In 1920 Roscoe Button’s first child was born. During the attendant festivities, however, no one thought it “the thing” to mention, that the little grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age who played around the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was the new baby’s own grandfather.”

“I think that deep down Phoebe thought it was nice too, and she wished her own parents would act more like the Finneys. She couldn’t admit this, though, and in a way, I liked this about Phoebe – that she tried to defend her family.”

“I thought she might change her mind, or at least tell me when she was leaving. But she did neither of those things. She left me a letter which explained that if she said good-bye, it would be too terribly painful and it would sound too permanent. She wanted me to know that she would think of me every minute and that she would be back before the tulips bloomed.”

“See? I’m almost as good as your father!” She said it in a shy way, laughing a little. I felt betrayed, but I didn’t know why. ”

“When my mother did not return, I imagined all sorts of things. Maybe she had cancer and didn’t want to tell us and was hiding in Idaho. Maybe she got knocked on the head and had amnesia and was wandering around Lewiston, not knowing who she really was, or thinking she was someone else.”

“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.”

“And I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.”

“When a daughter loses a mother, she learns early that human relationships are temporary, that terminations are beyond her control, and her feelings of basic trust and security are shattered. ”

“Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day. It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it, but that was one of the last memories she had of me, and I wished I could take it back.”

“Gram and Gramps knew that I wanted to see Momma, but that I was afraid to.”

“I know I’m just a trouble and a burden to you.”

“Walter: (Violently) No! ‘Cause ain’t nobody with me! Not even my own mother!”

“Oh, Dad, I don’t care how old you are, ever! I don’t care what, I don’t care anything! Oh, Dad . . . I love you!”

“The only affection that prevailed against time and the war was that which he had felt for his brother José Arcadio when they both were children, and it was not based on love but on complicity.”

“And now you must survive because we love you, and for the sake of your children and your children’s children.”

“You don’t want that ... You think you do.”

″ The confident young man in his imagination dwindled to a nervous little boy. ”

“When Nath had been born, then Lydia, Marilyn had not informed her mother, had not even sent a photograph. What was there to say? She and James had never discussed what her mother had said about their marriage that last day: it’s not right. She had not ever wanted to think of it again. So when James came home that night, she said simply, “My mother died.” Then she turned back to the stove and added, “And the lawn needs mowing,” and he understood: they would not talk about it.”

“In a family, is a secret a good thing? Theoretically, do you ever think, You know what would be great to keep from my family? A secret.”

“She had a stare that stretched to infinity. She was, in that moment, not my mother but something separate from me.”

“No one up in heaven could have made it up; the care a child took with an adult. ”

“She had avoided burying her mother beneath a blanket of white flowers for, to her, white symbolized purity, and nothing - not even death - would lead her to link Emma Tilman with purity.”

“I honor my father, Susanna. But I tremble to see him denouncing our friends and neighbors. We’ll not have a friend left when this business is done. I told him so, and we argued fiercely. I am afraid a rift is coming between us that will never heal.” “I can’t do anything about the rift between you and your father, Johnathan,” I said. “But you’ll have me for a friend. Always.”

“Seeing my dad cry like that was just so terrible. What was going on between us, me being his son and him being my dad, is pushed down and something else is moving up in its place. It’s like a man looking down to see his son and seeing a monster instead.”

“It all goes back and back. To our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads.”

“Do they miss their brothers and sisters, too? Bran wondered. Are they calling to Grey Wind and Ghost, to Nymeria and Lady’s Shade? Do they want them to come home and be a pack together?”

“We used to go everywhere together, my mother and I—visiting ancient temples, exploring local museums, watching Hindu festivals, staying up late to see the streets bloom with candlelight Now, she barely takes me on social calls. It’s as if I’m a leper without a colony.”

“Right now, with that lock of hair falling in his eyes, he’s the brother I’ve missed, the one who once brought me stones from the sea, told me they were Rajah’s jewels. I want to tell him that I’m afraid I’m going mad by degrees and that nothing seems entirely real to me anymore. I want to tell him about the vision […] I want to tell him everything and have him understand.”

“I can’t stand the sight of them huddled together against the truth, deaf and dumb to anything remotely real.”

“My family is vaguely Anglican, like everyone else, but the truth is that we rarely went to church in India. On Sundays, Mother took me for picnics under hot, cloudless skies. We’d sit on a blanket and listen to the wind whip across dry land, whistling to us. “This is our church,” she’d say combing fingers through my hair.”

“Jasmín waves with both hands and calls out, “Adiós, mami. Adiós, mami. Adiós, mami.”

“Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children?”

“Let go of your daughter with grace and you’ll find her calling on you with joy.”

“You’ve spent her whole life holding her. Whether cradled in your arms as a baby or wrapped in your embrace as a young woman, she’s been yours to have and to hold, Mother of the Bride—until now.”

“Now the time has come to let her go, to let her begin her own family and pledge her allegiance to another.”

“They were going on a family vacation over Thanksgiving. One problem, though: There were only three tickets.”

“Researchers find that whatever a family does do to influence a child’s personality, it affects each child differently, as if each is growing up in a completely different family.”

“As he handed it to me, I saw he’d gripped it so tightly his knuckles had turned white. We were not the kissing kind, me and Pa, but I wished that maybe he would at least hug me good-bye.”

“Then, like a levee breaking, it all came out: “I took advantage of her. I manipulated her. I called her horrible things. I stole her car once, with a shoelace. I’d leave, for days at a time, without telling her where I’d gone or who I was out with. I must have given her ulcers. When I . . . when I left for college, we didn’t even say goodbye. I just got in my Honda and drove to Boulder. I stole a bottle of her gin from the cabinet on my way out.”

“She was that kind of mother: who makes you doubt yourself, who would wipe you out if you let her. But I’m not going to pretend either. For a long time I let her say what she wanted about me, and what was worse, for a long time I believed her.

“She was a beautiful woman dragging a crippled foot and I was that foot. I was bricks sewn into the hem of her clothes, I was a steel dress.”

“I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty separate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.”

“Bridget’s room is too quiet, and she is tired of it. She wants a brother or a sister, a small, thin one that will fit in her doll’s bed. Or also a big brother who plays loud and noisy music. ”

I love the way she talks about her family, because it’s sorta different to how an adult would see it. I wasn’t super into the art style at first, but it definitely grew on me, so much so that I now think the art style really adds to the charm and value of this picture book. I’d love to read more about Clarice Bean!

“She smiled, pleased that she had met her half sister at last, and wondering if they were going to be friends.”

Johnny is relishing the annoyance he causes in his older sister and his younger brother. Roy is the young, stupid, naïve little kid. He always gave into his sister, loving her especially when she was like one of those “stern grocery store moms”. He gets frustrated when being left out because he seems like a young little pest. He is upset by the constant loss of the magic and happiness that was once in his life.

“It’s beautiful, Mama” said Jamela, stroking the crisp new material. “Yes, it’s beautiful. It costs a lot of money -- but I need something special to wear for Thelma’s wedding”, said Mama.

When your annoying little brother shares your room, your older brother is in the tunnel of adolescence, your dad hides in his office eating rocky road ice cream and swaying to Frank Sinatra, and your mother listen to foreign language tapes in a candlelit bathtub, what can you do to get away from it all?

Retta, the responsible older sister trying to replace mom, frustrated by the lack of appreciation for her efforts and is hurt by the lack of loyalty from her brothers. Johnny, the pre-teen experiencing a need for rebellion and independence. He’s trying to make a splash because of the lack of attention he gets and how fed up he is with being told what to do.

Meet the feisty Clarice Bean and sympathize with her search for just a little peace and quiet amidst a family many of us will recognize only too well. The witty text and jazzy illustrations capture the wonderful wacky chaos of a large extended family from the hilarious vantage point of one of its youngest members.

Bright and brassy, this youngster will win over readers in a split second and will leave them hoping for more of her trials and tribulations.

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse is not a true story. While it is a novel, however, and while its plot and characters are fictional, its portrayal of life during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s is historically accurate

“Even though she does everything better than her little sister, a big sister sometimes is sorry that she isn’t the youngest in the family.”

“It’s a picture book about sibling rivalry.”

“Contains some of the greatest characters in children’s literature, including the Smith boys - dignified Thomas, kindly Joshua and feisty, ultra-confident James - and their ebullient father.”

“Their relationship is beautifully articulated. It made me long for such a bond - where the sharing of thoughts, memories, ideas and emotions is expected and welcomed. Theirs was a mutually nurturing connection.”

“The relationship of Tolly and his grandmother is a very fine achievement. I loved the way they communicated and that they ate in the kitchen in front of the fire and shared their stories and adventures; it felt real and true.”

The family drives for hours and moves into a small cottage by a river that starts up beyond them and eventually flows down into the ocean. Jess, an excellent swimmer who craves time in the water, loves the location and the river.

“The Dursleys had everything they wanted but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was Mrs Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleysish as it was possible to be.”

“Look after yourself and your clothes, son,′ continued his mother. ‘You know very well what all this has cost your father. We’re poor. But your father wants you to be someone in life. He doesn’t wants you to work and suffer as he’s done.”

″‘It’s the only way to get rid of nits,’ said Dad. ‘But it never works!’ screamed Henry. And he ran for the door. Mum and Dad grabbed him. Then they dragged him kicking and screaming to the bathroom. ‘Nits are living creatures,’ howled Henry. ‘Why kill them.’ ‘Because...’ said Mum. ‘Because...because... they’re blood-sucking nits,’ said Dad. Blood-sucking. Henry had never thought of that. ”

“Daniel tends to be calm but can often lose his patience and becomes nervous because of his sister, Olguța. He often dreams about saving Monica but is awakened by his sister from time to time.”

“The following week, Nasreddine persuades his father to walk, and let him ride...but then people criticize the boy for making his father walk!”

“The siblings are continually fighting and Monica feels she has to take Olguta’s part in female solidarity, but she also has a strong attachment to Dânut.

“My mother is pretty strict with me. My grandmother tries to put her two cents’ worth in as well, but Mama hates her butting in. The two of them are forever as loggerheads with each other. Like whenever school camp comes along, it’s fights galore. My grandmother thinks that if a member of our family isn’t looking after me I’ll get raped or murdered. She accuses my mother of being a bad mother for not caring enough and letting me go.”

“One day however, Hiznobyuti ended up getting a message from the stars that he is needed elsewhere.”

“It is a fun and inspirational story, yet there are poignant parts as well. The book is about the boy called Hiznobyuti who was born differently from his family because of his facial feature.”

“This is a book about falling in love, grief, family relationships, friends, winning, loosing, pain, New Zealand in the late fifties.”

“Blooming Balaclava Boys. Why wouldn’t my mum buy me a balaclava? Didn’t she realize that I was losing all my friends, and just because she wouldn’t buy me one?”

“Nasreddine brougth the animal to his father, and together they loaded a large basket of dates onto the donkey’s back.”

‘And on that island,’ said Sam, ‘my grandad Abdulla lives looking after his goats and tending his date trees.’ ‘That’s right,’ said Dad. ‘Perhaps,’ said Sam, ‘my balloon is going to visit Grandad Abdulla.’ ”

“yes,′ said Dad. ‘Then it will fly high, high, high over the snow-decorated mountains where golden eagles nest; high, high over the sparkling blue-green sea where silver fish leap from the waves.”

“How were you supposed to change- in ways both big and small- when your family was always there to remind you of exactly the person you apparently signed an ironclad contract to be?”

“The British army are retreating, the French army are trying to hold the Germans off as long as possible and they desperately need to get to Dunkirk. ”

“I sat down at my place around the table y looked away from Mum. Dad wasn’t bothered about me -or anything else, for that matter. He was totally focused on his food. Jude, my seventeen-year-old brother, grinned knowingly at me. He’s a really irritating toad. I looked away from him as well. ‘He was with his dagger friend’ Jude smirked. ”

“And Grandad Abdulla will say, ‘A balloon! A balloon for me! My grandson Sam must have sent it to show that, although he’s so far away, he’s thinking of me.’ ”

“Mrs. Robinson has spared no effort to find Larry Ritchie, a stranger for more than eleven years to Lara. All the while during her mother’s illness there had been the spectre of the home for Lara if her father could not be traced. Mrs. Robinson had been as firm and as positive as Mum. ‘We are getting closer all the time to finding him. I’m sure of it. They’ll find the Man,’ her mother had told Lara over and over during those last weeks of her illness. ‘No child of mine will go to any home. I know Larry will come for you, Lara.’ ”

“Lara feels completely alone after the death of her mother. She is an intruder in her father’s new family, living far away from all that has been familiar.”

“Lara found it difficult to know just what to say. Here they were in the hot sun on the verandah of the school principal’s house - her long-lost father, this tall angular man with his piercing blue eyes, and her beloved teacher. Both of them standing and looking at her and expecting a reply of some kind. But she could only stare dumbly at this total stranger, who was nevertheless her only family now. Her father.”

“She is also looking to move on from her mother’s obsessive search for her missing uncle that has consumed all of August’s life.”

But two gerbils -like desert rats- come the Parkers’ way. The gerbils share a handy cage, and eat peanuts and other vegetarian food, and play hide-and-seek through the cardboard tubes of toilet rolls and kitchen paper. They have winning ways; but they don’t win over the children’s mother.

A simple tale that will delight lovers of gerbils, which should not be confused with jerboas, which despite the similarity of their name belong to a totally different family, nor with golden hamsters.

″ Most disturbing, afterwards, is his father’s breakdown (he “shouldn’t cry that way in front of me. . . . I don’t cry in front of him”) and his insistence that “it’s the chief duty of every human being to endure life.”

“Sid may not have loved his gerbils in the way that Peggy did, but he was conscientious about them. He changed their food and water daily, and cleaned out their cage every weekend. He exercised them often. What hey seemed to enjoy was the freedom of a limitless time -the living-room table would do- with a great many tunnels.”

“As long as they were there, the gerbils belonged to Sid. But, from that very first afternoon, Peggy was the one who loved them. Sid would be doing his homework, or out playing football, or just watching television.”

A boy gets two gerbils from a friend and so starts the battle between him and his sisters (with the silent support of his step-father) on one side and his mother on the other.

″... and his insistence that ‘it’s the chief duty of every human being to endure life.”

“Grover’s mother is very sick, but no one will tell him the truth about her. He realizes she is dying though, and is not surprised when she commits suicide rather than let herself become a total invalid. ”

“Wednesday, January 28th. Last Quarter. I woke up with a bit of a cold this morning. I asked my mother for a note to excuse me from games. She said she refused to namby-pamby me a day longer! How would she like to run about on a muddy field in the freezing drizzle, dressed only in PE shorts and a singlet?”

“The possibilities are apparent: however few the words for his mother’s wistful withdrawal, his father’s brusque estrangement, and Grover’s aching response to both, they’re the right words.”

“Erica stayed at the window and wondered about the surprise. It was only half a surprise now, because she knew it was coming, but she was glad in a way of the warning.”

“But then all the little girl had said was that her mother liked red, yellow, green and blue -- and so Mr. Rabbit was trying.”

“She wanted to tell people about him. That he was a teacher, that he had lost his leg when his school was bombed. That he had loved her and told her stories, and now she was all alone in this big, sad land.”

″ Charlie is the oldest; as the only adult she became the head of the family.”

“Oldest daughter Charlie struggles to care for her sisters in the wake of the accident that took their parents, while each of the younger sisters narrates a volume of the series.”

“These sisters are not perfect and they may not always get along, but in times of need, they can always count on one another.

″ Her father is very upset. He thinks that Joe should have a job. When Joe arrives at the train station, Betsy tells him that her father is uncomfortable about him not having a job. ”

“This is the first serious difference of opinion in their marriage. Betsy wants to agree with Joe but cannot help feeling bitter until she has an epiphany & realizes that Joe’s generosity is one of the things she loves about him.”

″ Before long, I.S.A.A.C. is in operation and every Saturday is definitely one to remember. Each Melendy child is able to do exactly what he or she pleases, discovering new ideas along the way.”

‘Thus continues the tale of a Jewish family of five sisters-Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte and Gertie-living at the turn of the century in New York’s Lower East Side.”

“There was certainly neither coldness nor hardness in the way Aunt Harriet and Aunt Frances treated Elizabeth Ann. They had really given themselves up to the new responsibility, especially Aunt Frances, who was very conscientious about everything.”

“Based during the First World war it tells the story of two families, one landed gentry and another who worked for them.”

“But when Oliver, who is six, wants to be out on his own, too, the rest of the family has second thoughts.”

“There was certainly neither coldness nor hardness in the way Aunt Harriet and Aunt Frances treated Elizabeth Ann. They had really given themselves up to the new responsibility, especially Aunt Frances, who was very conscientious about everything.”

“They have lived there since shortly after her father died, and Janey cannot imagine living anywhere else. Mama tells the children not to worry about it until it sells.”

“Would Gracie-the-cat be jealous if the Pyes got another pet_a dog? That was what Jerry Pye wanted to know and what he was dreaming about as he sat with Rachel, his sister, on their little upstairs veranda.”

“The four Melendy children soon find adventure discovering the many hidden attractions of the house.”

“May and Sid live with the family at Silver Bush, with the equally inconsiderate Binnie family dropping in whenever they desire and making plans to take over Silver Bush.”

“The man didn’t want to go, because he had younger siblings who relied on him for food and shelter; and so the man got sicker and sicker with each passing day, until one of his friends, who was the manager of the Buenos Aires Zoo, said something to him....”

“My favorite, as I recall, was Flossie. Her father often referred fondly to her as “my fat fairy.”

“All presente and correct,′ the driver added. Ahead of us, the other Granada was already parked near the front entrance - but there was no sign of Dad or Nicola. Our driver switched off the lights and the engine. ‘You folks go in, I ‘ll bring the bags,’ he said as he got out.”

“The story is about eleven-year-old twins who are sent to stay with their aunt and uncle in an old country house called Merylns. It’s a lovely place, but not a happy one; their uncle suffered a terrible tragedy, and their Aunt is disabled.”

“While Dad often made wisecracks about his origins, he always promised that one day the four of us would visit Australia, maybe even stay for a while.”

“Around a warm fire, Christopher listens as Grandfather recalls his boyhood through the seasons of the year.”

The mom is trying to be a stand up comedian which is different. Would have been nice to have Dad in the picture a little more. He mostly gets talked about, but then calls the household near the end of the book.

“It’s a good time for the Moffats to be storing up memories, because things are changing.”

‘Make up your mind, Little Brown Bear,’ says Mama. ‘Do you want to get up, or do you want to sleep?”

“Little Brown Bear cover his eyes. ‘No, no,’ he says, ‘the light hurts my eyes.”

This is a very moving account of a young girl’s life in a children’s home. The story is set in Germany, shortly after WW2....Halinka has one good person in her life, her mother’s sister, who loves her but can rarely see her.

“Her grandfather, an immigrant who arrived by boat to America himself, now carves the figureheads for sailing ships in his old age.”

″ He agrees that her plans are “all very well,” but goes on to tell her that she must do one more thing: ‘You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”

“She was six years old. Her mother had promised her that she should have a party. She had been looking forward to this party for weeks, and now at last the day had come. The children had been invited, six girls and four boys.”

″... there was a little girl whose name was Nora. She lived with her father and mother in the country, and their house stood in a beautiful park.”

“Well I suppose it is their business really, Pa, isn’t it?” said Ma. “Or soon will be. They’re abound to go exploring outside our garden before long, and we must warn them.”

In South Africa, a young black boy shares a special day with his grandmother when they go into the city on a shopping trip.

“Laura Fielder’s hair is so short she looks just like a boy; she doesn’t give Jenny lavish presents; she doesn’t live in a fancy house. But gradually Jenny learns that Laura has more to give than just presents and cookies.”

″‘I want to help,’ says Dusty, as he drops two eggs into the bowl. The third one cracks in his hand. ‘Oh boy, what a mess.’ says Grandpa. ‘There will be eggshells in the pancakes, I will have to take them out.‘”

“Well, this is a fine boorach you’ve got yourself into, Katie Morag,′ said Grannie, when Katie Morag had explained what she had done. ‘Still at least you’ve given me the right parcel - it’s got the spare part for the tractor that I’ve been waiting for.”

“They couldn’t help being saddled with her. They tried to make her feel like a member of the family, but they didn’t realize their efforts only showed that she wasn’t. It was quite natural. She simply was no their child. Nothing could change that.”

“He guided his father to the water’s edge and put a bow and arrow in his hands. ‘I am going to help you kill a bear,’ he said. ‘But how can I aim?’ his father asked. ‘I will be your eyes.‘”

When the time comes, he finds Nangiyala just as wonderful as he’d imagined. However, Nangiyala is under threat.

“His father did not touch it. ‘Keep it for your mother,’ he said. ‘I want to go to the lake.’ He reached for the boy’s arm and stood up. ‘I will visit Loom there. He s a wise and magical bird who might help me.”

“And there in the corner was Little Spook’s new baby sister tucked up in his old cradle. She looked just like a little doll!“Her name is Tiny Spook,′ whispered Mother Spook. ‘Don’t wake her up because she cries so very loudly.”

“Her brother Man-Man didn’t stir a muscle. His finger against the trigger of the double - barrelled shotgun just stayed there. The gun was held down at his side, all firm and solid.”

Karl must summon all of his courage to help his brother prepare for the battle that lies ahead . . .

Once home, Amy knew she was safe. With a well-stoked larder and plenty of oil for the lamps, her grandmother promised her they might even enjoy being snowed in.

“Pelle lived on a farm with his mother and father in the country. His grandmother and grandfather lived near him.”

“Violet is extremely depressed to see how weak her mother is, and how she does everything her father tells her to do and does not care that her husband has no respect for her whatsoever.”

“Uncle George was a water diviner, he had the gift. ‘The gift run deep and hidden,’ Uncle George would say. ‘It’s there to be found like water, like a good friend, sure as strawberries.”

“Open the drawer for me please, Rhoda,′ said Stanley. ‘Are you ready, Rhoda?’ called their mother. ‘Yes,’ answered Rhoda. ‘Stanley helped.’ ‘It was nothing,’ said Stanley. It is beautiful!′ cried their mother. ‘Hugh and kiss please,’ said Rhoda.”

“She stopped. Old Rowland owned the firm Father worked for. Poll had seen him once. He was a short, stout man with a barrel-shaped belly and a red jolly face. He had said, ‘So this is your little maid, James. Pretty-Poll,’ pinched her cheek, rather rad, and given her sixpence.”

“I had another idea. Remember your Aunt Janet... my photographer sister? She and you uncle Ted work in one of the undersea labs, Conshelf Ten. They have a son, Jon, about your age. How would you like to spend the rest of your Earth time living under the sea with them?”

“Great Aunt Emma is no ordinary old lady. But why is she so strange? For a start, she just appeared, grinning, on the doorstep, as if from nowhere.”

“Her brother Charlie was sitting on the top step and Sara sat down beside him. She held out her feet, looked at them, and said, ‘I like my orange sneakers, don’t you, Charlie?”

“To make things worse, his local hospital told him that he would barely live to his 14th Birthday. Since this event, his Mum and Dad are always arguing and making sure he is okay. ”