Friday First Pages (The Kid's Edition:) ANNIE'S ADVENTURES
First Pages Fridays offers a taste of an author's book—from ones long on the shelves to those newly launched, because while you can't judge a book by the cover, you can tell plenty from the first pages. With summer vacation almost here–this one's for the kids.
Today's first pages are from The Sisters 8 series for young readers ages 6-10, written by Lauren Baratz-Logsted with Greg and Jackie Logsted. The series is about octuplets whose parents go missing one New Year's Eve, leaving the girls to solve the mystery of their parents' disappearance while keeping the outside world from realizing that eight seven-year-olds are living home alone. The following excerpt is from Book 1, Annie's Adventures.
There will be nine-books in the series. Book 7 Rebecca's Rashness was released on May 2.
Listed by School Library Journal in "The Top 100 Children's Novels Poll"
ANNIE'S ADVENTURES
It was New Year's Eve, 2007, at approximately ten o'clock at night, and we were just getting ready to celebrate Christmas.
This may seem an odd time to celebrate Christmas, but we had been stranded by snowstorms in Utah. Our parents had decreed that we celebrate our belated holiday on the eve of another holiday, and so we were about to enjoy a twofer. Or so we thought.
"But where are the presents?" asked Zinnia.
We were in the drawing room, which sounds like a room you draw pictures in but that we mostly used to sit in. On this night, we were mostly sitting around the dying fire, waiting for something exciting to happen.
Betty came in with her dust cloth, which wasn't exciting at all. Betty was our mother's invention, a black and gold robot to make our life easier by cleaning. But something had gone wrong with Betty's programming.
"Why don't you dust the floor under the tree?" Zinnia suggested to Betty. "That way, it will be cleaner there when our presents arrive."
Betty took the dust cloth, which she had draped over one of her accordion arms, and with one pincered hook placed it upon her own head.
Do you see what we mean about Betty?
"Good job, Betty," Zinnia said. Really, what else could one say?
"Bye, Betty!" we all shouted after her as she exited the room. Betty would probably now head outdoors to dust under the wrong tree.
The drawing room was our favorite room of the house. There was a grandfather clock and even a suit of armor propped in one corner. Daddy always said every home should have one – the suit of armor, not the clock. Daddy hated clocks. The walls of the room were made out of big slats of gray stone, which was cool in summer, but not so hot in winter.
"Perhaps Mommy and Daddy are waiting until we go to sleep as usual," Annie said to Zinnia, "and why do you always have to worry so much about presents anyway?"
"I don't know why you have to be so bossy," Durinda said to Annie.
"Because she's the oldest," Georgia said. There was something sneering about the way she said it, like she was thinking of waging a coup.
"Do you always have to sneer so much, Georgia?" said Petal, in a rare stab at speaking out of turn. Petal was our shy girl.
"The mouse roars," observed Rebecca snidely.
"I don't think you should pick on Petal," said Jackie, our peacemaker.
"And I don't know why you have to stick up for everyone all the time," observed Georgia. Then she sighed. "I'm bored."
"How can you be bored?" Annie asked. "You got caught in an avalanche in Utah. Wasn't that enough excitement for you?"
Georgia yawned. "It was just a tiny avalanche. I could have swam out myself if you'd only left me there another hour."
"Excuse me," said Marcia, staring into the rapidly diminishing fire in the fireplace, "but hasn't anyone else noticed something is missing?"
"Such as?" prompted Rebecca.
"Perhaps I shouldn't have said something," Marcia self-corrected.
"Well," said Georgia, "if you're not going to say something, then why did you say anything at all?"
"No, not that," Marcia said, growing impatient. "What I should have said was, 'Hasn't anyone noticed someone is missing?' Or some ones?"
"I'm afraid you've lost me," said Petal.
"Mommy and Daddy," Marcia prompted. Marcia was the observant one among us. "You know, those adults we live with?"
We looked around us and realized she was right.
When had we last seen Mommy and Daddy?
Turn the clock back about twenty minutes:
"I'm going to the woodshed for logs for the fire," Daddy had said.
"I'm going to go fix a tray of eggnog for us all," Mommy had said.
"How long do you suppose," Petal asked now, "it takes a person to gather wood for a fire? Or pour ten glasses of eggnog?"
"Dunno," Zinnia said. "I suspect five minutes for the first, perhaps another three for the second if you put the carton back in the fridge. So, five and three – eight. It should have taken them eight minutes."
"But they were doing it simultaneously," Georgia said, "not one after another, so they both should have been back within five minutes, tops, even if Mommy took a really long time putting the carton back. Even if she decided to bring us cookies too."
"I could be wrong," said Annie, "but I think it's a little early to file a missing persons report."
"But they should have been back at least fifteen minutes ago!" Zinnia said, clearly starting to panic. "More, if you consider the time we've spent talking since we realized it was twenty minutes since they disappeared!"
"Well," Annie corrected, "that's not technically true. We noticed – "
"I noticed," Marcia briefly cut in.
" – at the twenty-minute mark," Annie went on. "But that doesn't mean that's when they disappeared. It merely means that's when we noticed – "
"I noticed."
" – they weren't exactly here anymore."
"This is no time for petty squabbles about time," said Jackie. "What do you think we should do?"
"We should look for them, of course," Annie said simply. "There's no doubt some simple explanation and then Georgia can go back to being bored and Zinnia can go back to worrying about presents."
Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of 20 books for adults, teens and young children, the most recent of which is the YA Victorian suspense novel The Twin's Daughter. Greg Logsted is the author of two books for teens, Something Happenedand Alibi Junior High. Jackie Logsted, six when she first helped conceive The Sisters 8, is now 11 and likes to write plays.
