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Vengeance is sweet. Vengeance taken when the vengee isn't sure who the venger is, is sweeter still.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Whatever it means to be a friend, taking a black eye for someone has to be in it.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but what they would have been alive for is the question Shakespeare wants us to answer.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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The light made the snowballs look yellow. Or at least I hoped that was the cause.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race--and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.
Then put all those together.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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You can't just skip the boring parts."
"Of course I can skip the boring parts."
"How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?"
"I can tell."
"Then you can't say you've read the whole play."
"I think I can live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark."
"Who knows?" she said. "Maybe you can't.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Did you find yourself?"
"What?" said my sister.
"Did you find yourself?"
"She found me," I said.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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A comedy isn't about being funny," said Mrs. Baker.
"We talked about this before."
"A comedy is about character who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all. That's how I know."
"Suppose you can't see it?"
"That's the daring part," said Mrs. Baker.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Maybe the first time that you know you really care about something is when you think about it not being there,and when you know-you really know-that the emptinessis as much as inside you as outside you.For it falls out,that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it;but being lacked and lost,why,then we rack the value,then we find the virtue that possesion would not show us while it was ours.That's when I knew for the first time that I really did love my sister.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I almost cried. But I didn't, because if you're in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Toads, beetles, bats.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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...and she ran out of the diesel combustion and right to me and we held each other and we were not empty at all.
"Holling," she said. "I was so afraid I wouldn't find you."
"I was standing right here, Heather." I said. "I'll always be standing right here.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Okay, so maybe sometimes the real world is smiles and miracles.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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And it really doesn't matter if we're under our desks with our hands over our heads or not, does it?
No, said Mrs. Baker. It doesn't really matter.
So, why are we practicing?
She thought for a minute. Because it gives comfort, she said. People like to think that if they're prepared then nothing bad can really happen. And perhaps we practice because we feel as if there's nothing else we can do because sometimes it feels as if life is governed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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When a girl holds a rose up to you, you run better, let me tell you.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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You don't have to say ridiculous things twice, Holling. Once is more than enough.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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A southwest blow on ye and blister you all o'er!'
'The red plague rid you!'
'Toads, beetles, bats, light on you!'
'As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed with raven's feather from unwholesome fen drop on you.'
'Strange stuff'
'Thou jesting monkey thou'
'Apes with foreheads villainous low'
'Pied ninny'
'Blind mole...'
-The Caliban Curses
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I love the sound of a brand-new bottle of coke when you pry the lid off and it starts to fizz. Whenever I hear that sound, I think of roses, and of sitting together with someone you care about and of Romeo and Juliet waking up somewhere and saying to each other, weren't we jerks? And then having all that be over. That's what I think of when I hear the sound of a brand-new bottle of Coke being opened
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I wonder why Holling had the fastest time," said Danny after the announcements - a whole lot louder than he had to. "Could it be because he was running away from two rats who were trying to eat him?"
"That might have a little to do with it," I said.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Spring break! Were there any two words ever put together that make a more beautiful sound?
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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A comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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When 1:45 came, half the class left, and Danny Hupfer whispered, "If she gives you a cream puff after we leave, I'm going to kill you" - which was not something that someone headed off to prepare for his bar mitzvah should be thinking.
When 1:55 came and the other half of the class left, Meryl Lee whispered, "If she gives you one after we leave, I'm going to do Number 408 to you." I didn't remember what Number 408 was, but it was probably pretty close to what Danny Hupfer had promised.
Even Mai Thi looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, "I know your home." Which sounded pretty ominous.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I saw my town as if I had just arrived. It was as if I was waking up. You see houses and buildings every day, and you walk by them on your way to something else, and you hardly see. You hardly notice they're even there, mostly because there's something else going on right in front of your face, But when the town itself becomes the thing that is going on right in front of your face, it all changes, and you're not just looking at a house, but at what's happened in that house before you were born.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I think something must happen to you when you get into eight grade. Like the Doug Swieteck's Brother Gene switches on and you become a jerk.
Which may have been Hamlet, Prince of Denmark's problem, who, besides having a name that makes him sound like a breakfast special at Sunnyside Morning Restaurant--something between a ham slice and a three-egg omelet--didn't have the smarts to figure out that when someone takes the trouble to come back from beyond the grave to tell you that he's been murdered, it's probably behooveful to pay attention--which is the adjectival form.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I think he became a man who brought peace and wisdom to hi world, because he knew about war and folly. I think that he loved greatly, because he had seen what lost love is. And I think he came to know, too, that he was loved greatly." She looked at the strawberry in her hands. "But I thought you didn't want me to tell you your future.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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One day we ran all the way to Jones Beach, and if Mrs. Sidman hadn't sent a bus after us, I think we would have collapsed on the boardwalk and died.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Don't look so surprised. You didn't think I'd spent my whole life behind this desk, did you?"
And I suddenly realized that, well, I guess I had. Weren't all teachers born behind their desks, fully grown, with a red pen in their hand and ready to grade?
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I know. That sounds like a lie. But Presbyterians know that every so often a lie isn't all that bad, and I figured that this was about the best place it could happen.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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That's the Teacher Gene at work, giving its bearer an extra sense. It's a little frightening. Maybe that's how people decide to become teachers. They have that extra sense, and once they have it, and know that they have it, they don't have any choice except to become a teacher.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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So you think Don Pedro ended up all right,β I said. βI think he became a man who brought peace and wisdom to his world, because he knew about war and folly. I think that he loved greatly, because he had seen what lost love is. And I think he came to know, too, that he was loved greatly.β She looked at the strawberry in her hands. βBut I thought you didnβt want me to tell you your future.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I lit a candle in a Catholic church for the first time that afternoon. Me, a Presbyterian. I lit a candle in the warm, dark, waxy-smelling air of Saint Adelbertβs. I put it beside the one that Mrs. Baker lit. I donβt know what she prayed for, but I prayed that no atomic bomb would ever drop on Camillo Junior High or the Quaker meetinghouse or the old jail or Temple Emmanuel or Hicks Park or Saint Paulβs Episcopal School or Saint Adelbertβs. I prayed for Lieutenant Baker, missing in action somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam near Khesanh. I prayed for Danny Hupfer, sweating it out in Hebrew school right then. I prayed for my sister, driving in a yellow bug toward Californiaβor maybe she was there already, trying to find herself. And I hoped that it was okay to pray for a bunch of things with one candle.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I never knew a building could hold so much inside.
. . . I saw my town as if I had just arrived. It was as if I was waking up. You see houses and buildings every day, and you walk by them on your way to something else, and you hardly see. You hardly notice they're even there, mostly because there's something else going on right in front of your face. But when the town itself becomes the thing that is going on right in front of your face, it all changes, and you're not just looking at a house but at what's happened in that house before you were born.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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you should be,β she said. βLook what happened to Julius Caesar when he underestimated those around him.β So we went out to the
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Because let me tell you, it was a happy ending.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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In the real world, people fall out of love little by little, not all at once. They stop looking at each other. They stop talking. They stop serving lima beans. After Walter Cronkite is finished, one of them goes for a ride in a Ford Mustang, and the other goes upstairs to the bedroom. And there is a lot of quiet in the house. And late at night, the sounds of sadness creep underneath the bedroom doors and along the dark halls.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Maybe the first time that you know you really care about something is when you think about it not being there, and when you know-you really know-that the emptiness is as much as inside you as outside you. For it falls out, that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why, then we rack the value, then we find the virtue that possession would not show us while it was ours. That's when I knew for the first time that I really did love my sister.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Mrs. Baker opened the classroom door, pulled the shades down on all the windows, turned the lights off, and then patrolled up and down the aisles. I bet she was rolling her eyes then. It doesnβt take very long when you are scrunched under your desk with your hands over your head breathing quietly and evenly to feel three things: That your spine is not meant to bend like this. That if you donβt stretch your legs out soon, they are going to spasm and youβll lose all feeling and probably not be able to walk for a very long time. That you are going to throw up any minute, because you can see the wads of Bazooka bubblegum that Danny Hupfer has been sticking under his desk all year, which now look like little wasp nests hanging down. But we followed our governmentβs drill procedures precisely and stayed under our desks for eighteen minutes, until the wind would have whisked away the first waves of airborne radioactive particles, and the blast of burning air would have passed overhead, and the mushroom cloud would no longer be expanding, and every living thing would have been incinerated except for us because we were scrunched under our gummy desks with our hands over our heads, breathing quietly and evenly.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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The warm breezes are coming in the window like quiet happiness.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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stomachs arenβt supposed
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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sometimes it feels as if life is governed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Defeat doesn't help you to grow,β I said. "It's just defeat."
Mrs. Baker smiled. βTwo weeks ago, the Saturn V lunar rocket passed its first flight test. It's been less than ten months since we lost three astronauts, but we're still testing the next rocket, so that some day we can go to the moon and make our world a great deal bigger.β She held her hands up to her face. βWouldn't Shakespeare have admired that happy ending?β she whispered.
Then she put the book away in her lower desk drawer.
It was quiet and still in the room. You could hear the soft rain on the windows.
βThank you for the cream puffs, β I said.
βThe quality of mercy is not strained,β she said.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Doug Swieteckβs brother wouldnβt even come near me, and I would foil Mrs. Bakerβs nefarious plan. But
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Big MβMurder!β
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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And by the way, for the record, I didnβt exactly say βOhβ when Sycorax and Caliban jumped out from the cages. Neither did Mr. Vendleri. And neither did Mrs. Baker.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Go thou ahead.
Droppeth thine soccer ball as thunder from the clouds
Upon his head beneath thee.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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November dripped onto Long Island, as it did every year. The days turned gray and damp, and a hovering mist licked everything.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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said. βIn the cupboard beneath the counter is a smaller cage. Pour some food into it, put the door to that cage next to the door in the bigger cage, and open them both. Sycorax and Caliban will run into the smaller cage. Then you can clean their cage.β It sounded too easy, and I looked at Mrs. Baker to see if something in her eyes said βPlot.β But I couldnβt see her eyes, because she was opening an ancient green book and turning thin pages. βHurry, Mr. Hoodhood, so we can enjoy the play,β she said. I found the small cage in the cupboard, and even though I didnβt think it would work out just like Mrs. Baker had said, it actually did. The rats were so hungry, I guess, that they would have done anything to get at the food. They probably would have eaten chalk-covered cream puffs. So when I opened the doors, Sycorax and Caliban laid off sticking out their scabby
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Teachers donβt reckon time the way normal people do.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race--and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.
Then put all those together.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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I have a message for you but I don't think you'll understand it." Danny's father said.
"What is it?"
"Danny said, "beat the pied ninnies.
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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interest?β βYes.β βWhat
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)
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DOWNED HELICOPTER TRANSPORT STOP KHESANH STOP LT T BAKER MISSING IN ACTION STOP
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Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars: A Newbery Honor Award Winner)