Can You Spot an Award Winning Children's Book Based on Its Opening Line?
Can You Spot an Award Winning Children's Book Based on Its Opening Line?
Writers agonize over creating fantastic opening lines. Take this quiz to see if you can spot a Caldecott, Newbery, or Printz Award winner based on its opening line.
Writers agonize over creating fantastic opening lines. Take this quiz to see if you can spot a Caldecott, Newbery, or Printz Award winner based on its opening line.
“My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted.”
“Music, especially classical music, especially Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor, has kinetic energy.”
“Here we go again. We were all standing in line waiting for breakfast when one of the caseworkers came in and tap-tap-tapped down the line.”
“The people of Bone Gap called Finn a lot of things, but none of them was his name.”
“So Mom got the postcard today. It says Congratulations in big curly letters, and at the very top is the address of Studio TV-15 on West 58th Street.”
““Our land is alive, Esperanza,” said Pap, taking her small hand as they walked through the gentle slopes of the vineyard.”
“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.”
“This story begins within the walls of a castle, with the birth of a mouse.”
“Years from now I’ll look back and remember today as the day I met him.”
“I know I’m not an ordinary ten-year-old kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things. I eat ice cream. I ride my bike.”
“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.”
“Eight years ago, when we were seven, my best friend Jamie gave me a kaleidoscope.”
“Flora Belle Buckman was at her desk. She was very busy. She was doing two things at once.”
“Oliver sat back at his stool. He was finished. His hands were blistered, he head ached, and his nostrils burned with the stink of boiling glue, but he was sure this one would work.”
“Sylvester Duncan lived with his mother and father at Acorn Road in Oatsdale.”
“At precisely 2:35 P.M. the last bell rang through the hallways and rooms of Plumstead Middle School.”
“The Forest was green with summer when the bear lumbered up from the creek bed where she had been cooling off.”
“At the top of the key, I’m moving and grooving, popping and rocking––Why you bumping? Why you locking?”
“This is how it all begins. With Zephyr and Fry––reigning neighborhood sociopaths––torpedoing after me and the whole forest floor shaking under my feet as I blast through air, trees, this white-hot panic.”
“From his perch behind the clock, Hugo could see everything.”