All tagged First pages
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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 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
