All in First Pages
“We didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keelier it was Paulina, and before that I can’t remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there’d be more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six—Mama, Papa, Carolos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me.”
The House on Mango Street ~ Sandra Cisneros
“Even as a little girl, I had thought that the swamp was a magical place where new lives began and old ones ended, where enemies and heroes weren’t always waht one expected, and where anything could happen, even to a clumsy princess.”
Excerpt from The Frog Princess by E.D. Baker
“Alex approached Black Elm as if she were sidling up to a wild animal, cautious in her walk up the long, curving driveway, careful not to show her fear. How many times had she made this walk? But today was different.”
from Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
“‘Miss Foster!” Mr. Sweeney’s nasal voice cut through Sophie’s blaring music as he yanked her earbuds out by the cords. “Have you decided that you’re too smart to pay attention to this information?”
Sophie forced her eyes open. She tried not to wince as the bright fluorescents reflected off the vivid blue walls of the museum, amplifying the headache she was hiding.”
Which novel does this first page belong to?
Also, our list of 2021 New Year’s Day ‘raffle’ books.
“The summer is made for stoop-sitting
and since it’s the last week before school starts,
Harlem is opening its eyes to September.”
The Poet X ~ Elizabeth Acevedo
“I like to save things. Not important things like whales or people or the environment. Silly things. Porcelain bells, the kind you get at souvenir ships. Cookie cutters you’ll never use, because who needs a cookie in the shape of a foot? Ribbons for my hair. Love letters. Of all the things I save, I guess you could say my love letters are my most prize possession.”
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
“Well, I have two names.
That’s what I say when people ask me what my middle names is. I say:
Well, I have two names.
My first name is Frank Li.
Mom-n-Dad gave me that name mostly with the character count in mind.
No really: F+R+A+N+K+L+I contains seven characters and seven is a lucky number in America.”
~ from Frankly In Love by David Yoon
“Simon Snow did what he came to do.
What they all said he would do someday. He found the big baddie—he found two—and he finished them off.
He didn’t expect to live through it. And he hadn’t.
Baz once told him that everything was a story, and that Simon was the hero.”
“Drake didn’t see the king’s soldier coming. He was busy digging in the onion patch. He pulled out a fat, white onion. A worm crawled on it. Drake didn’t mind the worm. He was the son of a farmer. HIs family had been growing onions in the Kingdom of Bracken forever. He would spend his life digging up onions, whether he wanted to or not.”
~ from Dragon Masters: Rise of the Earth Dragon by Tracey West
“It was a nice day.
All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn’t been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.
The angel of the Eastern Gate put his wings over his head to shield himself from the first drops.”
~ Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
“Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs and the beds.”
~ from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
“Carl Sagan said that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. When he says ‘from scratch’, he means from nothing. He means from a time before the world even existed. If you want to make an apple pie from nothing at all, you have to start with the Big Bang and expanding universes, neutrons, ions, atoms, black holes, suns, moons, ocean tides, the Milky Way, Earth, evolution, dinosaurs, extinction-level events, playtupuses, Homo erectus, Cro-Magnon man, etc. You have to start at the beginning.”
~from The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
“Guilt is a hunter.
My conscience mocked me, picking fights like a petulant child.
It’s all your fault, the voice whispered.”
~from Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
“Kell wore a very peculiar coat.
It had neither one side, which would be conventional, nor two, which would be unexpected, but several, which was, of course, impossible.
The first thing he did whenever he stepped out of one London and into another was take off the coat and turn it inside out once or twice (or even three times) until he found the side he needed.”
~ A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
“I might have to kill somebody tonight.
It could be somebody I know. It could be a stranger. It could be somebody who’s never battled before. It could be somebody who’s a pro at it. It doesn’t matter how many punch lines they spit or how nice their flow is. I’ll have to kill them.”
~ from On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
“I’ve been locked up for 264 days.
I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation.
6,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being.”
~ Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
“Look. I didn’t want to be a half-blood.
If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.
Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.”
The LIghtening Thief by Rick Riordan
“Here is everything I know about France: Madeline and Amelie and Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc De Triomphe, although I hav eno idea what the function of either actually is. Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, ad a lot of kings named Louis. I’m not sure what they did either, but I think it has something to do with the French Revolution, which has something to do with Bastille Day.”
~ Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
“Scene 1: EXT NEW YORK, AMERICAN MINISTRY OF MAGIC—1927—NIGHT
AERIAL of New York and MACUSA building.]
Scene 2: INT MACUSA BASEMENT, BARE, BLACK-WALLED ROOM, NIGHT
The long-haired, bearded GRINDEWALD sits motionless, partially fixed to a chair. The air shimmers, charged with spells.
ABERNATHY peers in at GRINDEWALD from the corridor.
A baby chupacabra—part lizard, part homunculus, a blood-sucking creature of the Americas—is chained to GRINDEWALD’S chair. “
~ The Crimes of Grindewald by J.K. Rowling
