“With more people on earth today, there are fewer Noodly Appendages to go around, so we each receive less touching--pushing down toward the earth--and thus, with less force downward, we’re taller.”
“Sarah brushed my hair and tied it up in back with a rose velvet ribbon she had brought from Maine. She brushed hers long and free and tied it back, too, and we stood side by side looking into the mirror. I looked taller, like Sarah, and fair and thin. And with my hair pulled back I looked a little like her daughter. Sarah’s daughter.”
“She looked into this book and she looked into that. There was magic for thin and magic for fat, and magic for tall and magic for small, but the magic she was looking for wasn’t there at all.”
“I’m shy, which I never was before. It turns out when you are my height hiding is not easy. Even my voice tries to hide’ it’s gotten quiet and whispery.”
“His odd coat from heel to head was half of yellow and half of red, and he himself was tall and thin, with sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, and light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, no tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, but lips where smiles went out and in: there was no guessing his origin.”
“There are moments when it is a fine thing to be tall. On this occasion Katy’s long legs and arms served her an excellent turn. Nothing but a Daddy Long Legs ever climbed so fast or so wildly as she did now. In one second she had gained the top of the fence. ”
“Before them stood an old man, very tall and upright, carrying a staff as though it were a king’s sceptre. There was something so noble about the old man that the children knew, in spite of his simple tunic and broad-brimmed hat, that he must be a king at the very least.”
“When Katy hit the curve she took off like a kite,
High over the treetops on her first and last flight,
That would quickly have ended poor Katy caboose
If it hadn’t been for two towering spruce.
The caboose became caught in a very tight squeeze
Between the tall trunks of two evergreen trees.”