Category: Story Time

My five-year-old nephew calls the corona virus “the disease,” like a 1300s plague prophetin underoos and velcro shoes warning the masses: stay away from the playgroundor you’ll get the disease.

Two days after the crack in the floor of our barn appeared, they found Davie O’Hare’s body in the woods. Me and Sadie were up at the schoolhouse when they found him, so we didn’t get to see, but word gets around anyway. They say he was shriveled up like a raisin, all his blood [...]

(Japanese) The practice of buying more books than you can read. Of course, I did.From my first UniversityWomen’s Book Sale where bookswere piled on every table.Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Romefor a nickel?  Of course.Twelve individual Shakespeare playsin hard covers for 5 cents apiece?Sold.  Goldsmith’s Collected Poemsfor a quarter?  No question. They gave me a banana box for mybounty, could barely carry [...]

Effort The first full day of spring, 2020, is a white meringue of snow under a blue sky, sunglasses essential. Four of us meet at a course groomed for Nordic skiing, snap boots into bindings, and take up our poles. Volunteers have packed new and winding trails this year, wide and smooth for skate-skiing. We’re [...]

YOU WOULDN’T KNOW the place was there at all, if you didn’t know where to look.  It’s a long way out, Carrie told people, knowing they would get only as far as the old cemetery, where pavement gave way to dirt winding darkly through corridors of pine and brush. Then they would turn back, thinking they had passed it. [...]

No one talks about the life rattle, the one she makes in her crib, florid with her first-ever cold—the result of a germ you overlooked. The perks of parenthood, unlimited stains on your record, dishonour splashed across your breast. You could signpost every spot: first waddle through the busted gate; the burner where you superheat [...]

She smells smoke.

Moving swiftly in the dark, T’Rayles pushes through the dense forest as she makes her way back to the village.

The smoke grows stronger with every scarred birch and solid spruce she passes. It’s not the comforting scent of a home’s hearth or metallic tang of the blacksmith’s forge.

No.

It smells of [...]

Estella had to walk around the train to get to the platform, and she watched as the Diamonds and the other passengers spilled out of the two passenger cars, thankful to have arrived and anxious to get to their beds. Oliver and his sons began to ferry the women and children in the Oldsmobile and [...]