The Crying Rocks - Softcover

Lisle, Janet Taylor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1481479768 ISBN 13: 9781481479769

Verlag: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

From Newbery Honor author Janet Taylor Lisle comes a lyrical story about one girl’s discovery of her startling past—and her search to understand her complicated present.

Joelle’s height and dark skin set her apart from everyone in Marshfield. It’s no secret that she’s adopted, but where is she from? Aunt Mary Louise says she came from Chicago on a freight train, but the story doesn’t sit right with Joelle. There’s something more. She feels it.

Carlos, the quiet boy in Joelle’s Spanish class, sees it. When he tells her that she looks like a girl in the town library’s old mural of Narragansett Indians, Joelle can’t help sneaking a look. She’s surprised by a flicker of recognition. And when Carlos tells her about the Crying Rocks, where the ghosts of Narragansett children are said to cry for their lost mothers, Joelle knows she must visit them.

When they finally set out through the forest, neither she nor Carlos anticipates the power of the ancient place, or the revelations to be found there—about the pasts they’ve both buried, and the discovery of a rare kind of courage that runs deep in Joelle’s family.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Janet Taylor Lisle’s books for young readers have received the Newbery Honor Award (Afternoon of the Elves), the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction (The Art of Keeping Cool), Holland’s Zilveren Griffel, and Italy’s Premio Andersen Award, among other honors. A graduate of Smith College and former journalist, Janet lives in Rhode Island and often draws on Rhode Island history in her work. Visit her online at JanetTaylorLisle.com.

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The Crying Rocks

1

EVERY MORNING BEFORE JOELLE COMES out of the house to go to school, there is little Michiko Martin waiting for her on the sidewalk. She stands behind the low prickly hedge, dangling her lunch box in one hand and staring with worshipful eyes at Joelle’s front door, whose paint is peeling off and screen is ripped.

“That Chinese girl is out there again,” Aunt Mary Louise calls, catching sight of her figure from the upstairs window. “What’s she want with you, anyway, a little kid like that?”

“Nothing,” Joelle yells back, “and don’t bother to come down. I’m making my own breakfast.”

Aunt Mary Louise hasn’t been feeling up to par since summer. First it was her back. Now her legs are giving her trouble. She used to get up at 6:00 a.m. to fix Vernon something to eat before he left for work at the turkey ranch. Lately, she’s not even making it downstairs before Joelle has to leave.

The moment Joelle appears at the door, Michiko’s mouth drops open an inch or so. Her fine-rimmed eyes widen, as if she’s seen something marvelous. Joelle strides across the beat-up lawn on her long legs and pushes through the prickly hedge, now bristling with the red berries of fall.

“How’s it going, Michiko?”

“Okay,” she says.

“So what’s for lunch today?” Joelle asks, looking down at the lunch box.

“A bologna sandwich without mustard, and a boiled egg,” Michiko barely breathes, collapsed with shyness.

“Well, that’s a surprise,” Joelle says, trying to keep things light. “That is truly a big surprise.”

Michiko nods. She eats the same thing for lunch every day. Seven days a week, four weeks a month, twelve months a year, a bologna sandwich without mustard, and a boiled egg. Joelle could say something mean about this if she wanted, but she holds back. Michiko is too little to rag on.

“Do you have art today?” she asks instead, stooping over to speak as they begin to walk along. Michiko, who is eight, is very small for her age, while Joelle, at thirteen, has grown unusually tall, five feet nine inches at last measurement and still going. There must have been a church steeple somewhere back in her family tree, Aunt Mary Louise often jokes.

“No art today,” Michiko answers, just above a whisper. She has coal-black hair like Joelle, but shiny and sleek instead of thick. As best she can, she’s wearing it the same way Joelle’s wearing hers, pinned back with barrettes behind the ears.

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Only on Fridays, right? That’s terrible, art just once a week. They should have it more. Especially for people like us, who really love it.”

“You like it too?” Michiko dares to ask. She’s not really Chinese, but Japanese. Or rather, half Japanese. Aunt Mary Louise knows this, she just doesn’t always remember to make the distinction. Michiko’s mother came from Japan when she was a child herself, and later met and married her father, who is an American. Michiko was born and has lived her whole life so far just down the street.

“I used to,” Joelle says, “when I was your age. I remember we made necklaces out of beer tabs one time. And another time we carved pendants out of wood. You know what a pendant is, right? It’s like a charm you wear around your neck? I’ve still got mine somewhere. Do they let you do jewelry?”

Michiko doesn’t answer. She peeks up at Joelle, then glances away fast, as if she’s walking with the sun or, anyway, with something too bright to look at for very long.

“Are you really a lost royal princess?” she blurts out suddenly. “Penny Perrino said you are but you don’t want to tell people.”

Joelle comes to a stop and looks down. “A what?” she explodes. “A lost what?”

Michiko jumps.

“Listen, don’t ask me that stuff,” Joelle yells at her. “I don’t want to hear that stuff anymore, okay?”

Michiko’s mouth quivers and she stares at the ground.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.” Joelle puts her arm around Michiko’s narrow shoulders. They start walking again. “I’m just tired of questions like that, all right? I don’t even want to think about questions like that.”

Michiko nods sadly. Soon her sunstruck face is glancing up, though. Both of them know that tomorrow morning she’ll be standing outside Joelle’s house, waiting to walk with her again.

As everyone in school and many people in the small town of Marshfield, Rhode Island, are aware, Joelle is adopted. Aunt Mary Louise was open about it right from the beginning, though she needn’t have said a word and anyone could have guessed. Joelle has never looked the least thing like her, or like Vernon, her adoptive father, for that matter. Where they are sandy-colored, Joelle is dark. Where they are heavy and earthbound, she is agile and quick. Joelle carries herself with a brisk aloofness that bears no resemblance to her aunt’s hearty manner. Perhaps it’s these differences that have inspired people to speculate about Joelle’s background over the years. She’s sick of it. This new rumor of royal blood is particularly crazy. Michiko’s friend, Penny, probably picked up a strand of gossip at school this fall. Now, in the girls’ minds, and also in the minds of a number of their friends, Joelle has become something exotic and fascinating.

On her way home from school Joelle often sees this group of girls huddled across the street in front of their elementary school, watching for her. They’re the walkers, the ones who live close enough so their parents don’t worry about them coming and going by themselves. They’re there when she walks by this afternoon, whispering frantically behind their hands.

She told me she doesn’t like to talk about being a princess, Joelle imagines Michiko saying. Which must mean she is one!

Michiko must have passed along some story since this morning because everyone falls silent and follows Joelle with knowing eyes as she goes by. Joelle doesn’t speak to them. She holds her head up and strides on. It’s become embarrassing, this pack of little girls always on her tail. She stands out enough as it is, and not in a way that’s any good to stand out.

In her own class Joelle isn’t popular. There her height is a sign of weirdness. The boys are all shorter. Besides, people notice her skin. It’s a dusty auburn color unlike anyone else’s. The black kids know she’s not one of them. She doesn’t look Hispanic or Asian, either.

“Where do you think you’re from?” someone asked her just the other day, the girl named Melinda, who wears black eyeliner and high-heeled boots to class.

“Where do you think you’re from, Playboy?” Joelle had fired back, loudly, so everyone would hear.

She has a talent for saying the perfect terrible thing to stop people in their tracks. To keep them away. The “in” girls avoid her like the plague. Even the older boys are wary, ever since she told Buddy Guinn, the football captain, his fly was open and he actually looked down.

“Get lost, okay?” Joelle...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1481479768
• ISBN 13: 9781481479769
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 208
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande