I hail from Arkansas and until now, we’ve been known for the Clinton Presidential Library, the US’s only diamond mine (Crater of Diamonds State Park), and the headquarters of Wal-Mart. But this year we’ll be known for the Arkansas Teen Book Award, established by Arkansas Librarians. (Facebook page.) The reading list was announced in December, 2009 and this year’s winners will be announced in December, 2010.
Two days ago, we looked at opening lines from 100 top novels and categorized them to learn how to open a novel. Yesterday, we looked at the opening lines from the teen novels on the 7-9th grade, 2010 Arkansas Teen Book Award reading list and challenged you to identify the novels. Today’s opening lines are from the 10-12th grade reading list for the Arkansas Teen Book Award.
Identify These Teen Novels from Their Opening Lines, #2
OK, TRY to identify these without any help. They are all 2008 copyright books. Need help? See the tip below.
(Actually, many of these are graphic novels and there’s at least one non-fiction on the list.)
- I look at my fingers again, the ones that trembled and shook just a few days ago at Mr. Bender’s kitchen table.
- Willow Creek Camping Ground, Willow Creek, Montana.
Daddy? - Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon, Himalayas – 1938.
See anything? - You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold.
- As with the banking industry, the Russian political system and the romantic liaisons on the Gossip Girl, all is not as it seems in the world of food and drink.
- Time 6:13:10 four minutes earlier…
Readings look good, Annie. - No doubt with all those grapes, Aristotle, the world’s first naturalist, passed gas.
- We live in a world where medical miracles and high-tech marvels are almost commonplace.
- In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind.
- Needle doesn’t know which way to point.
- twenty-two years later –
I’m dreaming of the boy in the tree and at the exact moment I’m about to hear the answer that I’ve been waiting for, the flashlights yank me out of what could have been one of those perfect moments of clarity people talk about for the rest of their lives. - The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.
- I’m a senior at Cesar Chavez High in San Francisco’s sunny Mission district, and that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world.
- Henry and I dug the whole seven feet deep.
- The strikers cheered as the tractor dragged the ancient Chrysler Newport in front of the main gate.
- just cause you can’t see, don’t mean aint nothing there. (See comments: Thanks to the author for adding the comment with the opening line!)
- “So I was reading this Vonnegut novel,” I said to Samantha.
- I was born in the United States of America.
- The Cosmic hurricane rips through uncharted space at one
million miles per hour, gas plumes extending for a thousand light-years
in any direction. - Venomous by Christopher Krovatin
Tip No. 1: The Reading List (pdf) can be found here. These are the opening lines for the Level 2, Grades 10-12 list. I didn’t scramble up the list, it just goes down the line.
Tip No. 2: The links will take you to the Amazon page for each book.
Pitch Black opening line, “just cause you can’t see, don’t mean aint nothing there”
Great reading everyone!
“The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say. ”
From the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness, the first book: The Knife of Never Letting Go