...kids marked by the special thinness that one has only once, the transparent thinness of early maturity, when, without knowing it, you are immortal. And completely permeable. When you can walk indifferently down the street with a lover because you ...
There's never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing genocide, that the person doing it didn't think he was fully justified. That's a mental trick called rationalizing, and it's done the human race mo...
That’s why I admired that kid who spelled it wrong on purpose so he could sit down. He knew he wasn’t going to win, so why stand there for 3 hours. First round. “Cat, K-A-T, I’m outta here.” Then as he passed you, “Ha! I know there’s 2 ...
Piper and Hazel were ready to go, but first Annabeth turned to Percy, who was leaning on the starboard rail, gazing over the bay. Annabeth took his hand. “What are you going to do while we’re gone?” “Jump in the harbor,” he said casually, l...
I was never very good with either my hands or feet. It always seemed to me they'd just been stuck on as an afterthought during my making. Dreams didn't translate through sports, or music, dancing, carpentry, plumbing. I was the bookish kid, more at h...
George unhinged his jaw and coughed up a little plastic bottle filled with chewable vitamins. "You're kidding," I said. "Are those Minotaur-shaped?" Hermes picked up the bottle and rattled it. "The lemon ones, yes. The grape ones are Furies, I think....
A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree. Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow...
When a teacher is paying extra attention to your child, you believe that it's because you raised such an exceptional kid, one that stands out head and shoulders above the rest of her booger-eating friends.
And I don't just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you—the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. It's the change you remember, the firsts and wh...
All those adorable towheaded kids in the promotional film are going to turn thirteen. Once a family member hits puberty, odds are that everybody is not going to have the same ideals. Unless everybody gets together and agrees that the new ideals invol...
Kids from small families grow about an inch taller than those from large families. This is true regardless of income and social class, because a body can't grow well while fighting off nine siblings' cold viruses.
Worst of all were the accolades and thanks from people "for what you guys did over there." Thanks for what, I wanted to ask—shooting kids, cowering in terror behind a berm, dropping artillery on people's homes?
He held his hand out, palm up, watching her with soft, penetrating eyes, deep, dark eyes that called to her the longer she stared at them. “How ’bout you give me the benefit of the doubt every once in a while, hmm? I’d like a chance to prove I�...
The soul mate we marry can become an "ex," but the soul mates we have in our children will be ours forever, until the end of our life.
Don't you think you're a little old now to be quoting ?' I ask, raising an eyebrow at him. 'You read ,' Will protests. 'Everyone reads ,' I exclaim. 'It's an institution. Besides, it's not really a kids book, it's a metaphor for the world at large. I...
Are your kids better off watching 10 hours of Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel every week?
I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really...
She was clean": no piercings, tattoos, or scarifications. All the kids were now. And who could blame them, Alex thought, after watching three generations of flaccid tattoos droop like moth-eaten upholstery over poorly stuffed biceps and saggy asses?
Have you ever been in love? It's a question you're asked a lot as a kid from your friends, adults, anyone. They're curious. How do you know you're in love? Do we even really know what love means? It's just a word to define a feeling.
When Frey asked students to draw the creation, the other kids drew animals and Adam and Eve. Caroline covered her paper in black crayon, then held it up to reveal she had punched out holes for the stars and the moon. 'And then there was light', she s...
I wasn't the kind of kid like Spielberg or Lucas who knew to go to film school. I didn't know at 12 what I was going to do; it took me until I was about 23. I studied journalism in college, but after school, I got a job in public television and I nev...
