Sue Ann Alderson Quotes

“He named them all and brushed their coats and took them for rides in his car. They were the friendliest goats in the world. Mattie loved them.”

“And they would make ham or bake muffins for Uncle George. But best of all, they gave Uncle George their friendship. ‘Friendship is precious as water,’ Uncle George would say.”

“Every summer Mattie visited her Uncle George, and that was her favorite time in the whole year. Uncle George kept twenty-eight goats.”

‘When a neighbor needed a new well, Uncle George would take a forked willow wand and walk slowly over the land, holding the wand straight our before him, each hand grasping one side of the fork. As he walked, he’d coax the wand with his special charm.”

“That would break the power, spoil the charm,′ Uncle George would say. So folks gave him fee and straw for his goats, vegetables from their gardens, or sometimes a quilt or some clothes they had made.”

“Maybe I just don’t have the gift,′ Mattie once said to Uncle George. ‘Maybe you don’t, but maybe you do,’ he told her. ‘The gift sometimes starts out tiny as a berry seed. It needs some nourishing before it grows.”

“Ida and her family live on an island farm off the west coast of Canada. One busy spring morning, Ida’s mother asks her to take some freshly baked bread to ...”

“Then, sure as strawberries, the tip of the wand would dip and bobble and tug and finally curse in a graceful arc toward the earth. When folks took their shovels and dug deep at the exact spot where the wand had pointed, they found water.”

“Mattie loved watching Uncle George find water. Sometimes when he was busy, Mattie would go off by herself and cut a forked willow branch and practice. She held the wand firmly straight out in front of her and coaxed it with the charm.”

“It was a sad time for Mattie too. There were only three days before she was to leave for home. The goats were Uncle George’s family, and hers too. If only I could find water, she thought, that would do the trick.”

“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.”

“Then came the hard, hot summer when the wells dried up and Uncle George took a fall. He broke his arm and had to wear a cast from his shoulder to his fingertips.”

“Ida’s mother asks her to take some freshly baked bread to their neighbors. Ida’s brother thinks she’s too young to go alone. ”

“On one of those island farms, young Ida lived with her big brother, John, her little sister, Martha, and their mother and father.”

“John, Ida’s brother, thought she was too young to go alone. She wasn’t even big enough yet to help with the spring sheep run, an annul event at which the sheep were driven into a corral to be shorn.”

“Bonnie McSmithers decides to make pancakes for breakfast with a Little Too Much Salt, but no help from Mommy.”

″..when suddenly she thought of a Great Idea, PANCAKES FOR BREAKFAST!”

“Then Mommy McSmithers came in and said, ‘Bonnie McSmithers! What’s happening now? I see that you’re trying... Shall I show you how?”

“Although her family thinks she is not big enough to participate in the annual sheep run, Ida proves she is big enough to outwit the smugglers trying to steal ...

“She isn’t even big enough yet to help with the spring sheep run. But when Ida outsmarts a gang of sheep smugglers, everyone knows she’s ready for new responsibilities. ”

“It is about 3 sheep that were in the middle of a field. She could hear whistling from men on both ends of the field.”

“Parents, Vanessa and Max, are, respectively, a poet and an artist, but “to make money” Vanessa is a free-lance mechanic and Max, a house painter... ”

″ Transziggidy corrals the villains during the parade and then finds Walter II, whom the inept kidnappers had lost. Everything ends happily; even Aunt Tweedle may have found Romance with the Pound Man.”

“Ida took the sheep with her back to her home so that the men could not catch the sheep.”

“Her mother sends her over to a neighbor’s house with bread, where there has been no time for baking because a baby was born. But on the way, while she visits a ewe with twin lambs, Ida hears the low whistles smugglers use to signal one another.”

“And there was the danger of smugglers who came from the mainland to steal sheep_Ida might encounter them. Mother was sure, however, that Ida would be safe as long as she stayed on the trail.”

“Wanda and brothers Willy and baby Walter II, who gurbles instead of talking, are children in a very democratic home.”

“The children’s decision via a family council to acquire a dog for the back seat of Butterfly, the family car, serves as the initiating action to bring the whole family into conflict with a pair of bad guys.”

″ But on the way, while she visits a ewe with twin lambs, Ida hears the low whistles smugglers use to signal one another.”

“T. Rexford, the Pound Man, supplies a pup that grows prodigiously. Willy teaches Transziggidy, the dog, tricks such as how to retrieve Walter II whenever he gets lost or how to play ‘catching crooks’.”

″ Aunt Tweedle’s “allergy” to pets sends Transziggidy back to the pound, which faces closure because of overcrowding.”

“By starting a miniature sheep run, she moves them all to safety, showing her family not only that she is ready for the big sheep run next year...”

“A letter from Aunt Tweedle announces her intention to visit for three weeks. In contrast to the optimistic family whose motto is “there’s a rose in every cabbage’.”

″... and she was going to find her shoes right after she put her inflatable barking peacock punch-me bag away in the coat closet_where it didn’t especially belong but looked nice and almost fit and was handy for taking on walks...”

“Aunt Tweedle is a gloomy pessimist who sees the worst in everybody and everything while talking in words Beginning with Upper Case Letters. ”

“No thanks,′ said Bonnie, and she made up a poem: ‘Bonnie McSmithers is at it again! Keep your eyes on the lassie, you ladies and men. Here she goes! Can she do it? Aha! What a sight! Got a little bit wrong, but a lot of it right!”

“The family mounts a “Save our Pound” campaign culminating in a family float in the Comet Day parade that celebrates Earth’s passage through the tail of Hartley’s comet.”

“Bonnie McSmithers woke up very, very early one morning, before anybody. She decided to build a tree house right after she found her shoes,.. ”

“Then she mixed and mixed. Most of the flour and milk and eggs and salt and stuff got all mixed inside the bowl, and some of it got mixed up right over the sides and out of the bowl.”

“Two crooks, who want to obtain the pound property because of the old gold mine beneath it, try to stop the family’s efforts by kidnapping Walter II. ”

“So Bonnie got a BIG bowl and put in some flour and sugar and milk and eggs and other stuff and a little Too Much Salt.”

“Bonnie wiped up the spill and put in a little more of everything except salt, and Mommy and Bonnie had very fine pancakes for breakfast.”

“In a creepy-crawly old house on Frobble Street, in the middle of a tiny town called Quigly, behind a tall wall covered with sprawling brambles and locked in by an iron gate with a sight that said ‘Keep Out_This means You!’ lived Thurlo Darby and his Something,”

“Penelope Bliss bent over to see what was in Burt’s pocket and discovered the letter. ‘Wherever did you get his, you, little rascal?’ Burt didn’t tell her. Penelope Bliss opened the envelope and read the letter.”

“There is a Something in my house,′ Thurlo Derby would say. ‘It make noises _tappings and rappings. It opens doors and closes windows. It makes the curtains blow when there is no breeze. I just don’t know what to think.”

“How can we find out if it’s true?′ asked Arnold. ‘We could say we won’t believe in the Something unless we see it ourselves.’ ‘No one would listen to us,’ said Amelia. Grown-ups mostly listen to other grown-ups.”

“Very cool mystery and the monkey who eats handkerchiefs is hilarious.”

“Thurlo Darby has something in his house. He likes to tell everyone he has something in his house. It opens doors, makes thumping noises, closes windows, ...”

“So the Frobble Street Four set to work on Amelia’s costume. They used almost everything in the costume trunk. Arnold made a hat from half a soccer ball with an ostrich feather and a veil.”

“The Frobble Street Four were Franklyn, Amelia, Arnold, and Mia. Franklyn could juggle and do magic and knew how things worked. Amelia could draw just about anything and was a fabulous actress. Arnold could crack his toes. And mis liked to watch.”

“Thurlo Darby rarely went out, except to buy the frozen snails and spinach noodles on which he lived. But when he did go out, he would talk about his Something to everyone he met.”

“The paper had indeed sold lots of copies, and the TV news repeated the story. Everywhere, people in town were buzzing about Thurlo Darby’s Hoax and Bingham Frew’s Investigation.”