All in First Pages
“Okay, so when you’ve just moved to a new town and are still a total outsider…
this…
…is not the best way to start life at your new school.
Hi! Penelope here. Peppi for short. It’s my first day at Berrybrook Middle School, and I just ripped over my own feet and dropped everything.”
~ Awkward by Svetlana Chmakova
“Long ago, on the wild and windy isle of Berk, a smallish Viking with a longish name stood up to his ankles in snow.
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, the Hope and Heir to the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, had been feeling slightly sick ever since he woke up that morning.”
~ How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
“First the colors.
Then the humans.
That’s how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.”
~The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein
“Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house by the sea. There were always plenty of other children for him to play with, and there was the sandy beach for him to fun about on, and the ocean to paddle in. It was the perfect life for a small boy.”
~ James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
“Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewin it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion.”
~First Lines of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.
The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around th ehouse, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods. There were no houses. There were no roads. There were no people. There were only trees and the wild animals who had their homes among them.”
~ Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
"Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs. Macready and three servants."
~The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
"It was a dark and stormy night.
In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed an watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the tress clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraith-like shadows that raced along the ground.
The house shook.
Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook."
" A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
"Clay didn't think he was the right dragon for a Big Heroic Destiny.
Oh, he wanted to be. He wanted to be the great MudWing savior of the dragon world, glorious and brave. He wanted to do all the wonderful things expected of him. He wanted to look at the world, figure out what was broken, and fix it." ~ Tui T. Sutherland
First Lines: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." ~ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Last year I posted a 12 Must-Have Picture Books for the 12 Days of Christmas. The list contains some classics and some newer ones, but they are all picture book 'must-haves' for any young bibliophile (or older ones too). My friend suggested that I make a list for older kids that other people could reference for great gifts for different age groups.
Well, I don't feel exactly qualified to do so. Why? Because while I have read thousands of picture books, I am not as well read in early chapter books, middle grade books, or YA books. So I may curate a list with some input from some other knowledgeable friends, but in the meantime, I thought I'd place all my First Lines novels in one place along with book summaries in case you might want to gift one to a friend or family member this holiday season.
"'Finders Keepers! Hee Hee!'
'Grabbing my notebook out of my hands isn't finders keepers. Zita?'
'This wasn't here yesterday."
'It looks like a meteoroid.'"
"Sophie had waited all her life to be kidnapped. But tonight, all the other children of Gavaldon writhed in their beds. If the School Master took them, they'd never return."
"Far away from here, following the Jade River, there was once a black mountain that cut into the sky like a jagged piece of rough metal. The villagers called it Fruitless Mountain because nothing grew on it and birds and animals did not rest there."
"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death."
"Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that's true."
"Garrison Griswold whistled his way down Market Street, silver hair bobbing atop his head like a pigeon wing. He tapped his trademark walking stick, striped in Bayside Press colors, to the beat of his tune."
"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping."
"The big question is: Is Origami Yoda real?
Well, of course he's real. I mean he's a real finger paper made out of a real piece of paper."
