Claudia and the Great Search Quotes

“I had brought my schoolbooks along with me and I’d fully intended to start my weekend homework, but I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was Emily and how she’d been adopted.

Emily was lucky. Sure, she was having a few problems, but every day, her mother and father told her about her adoption, even though she was too little to understand. I knew this because Kristy had told me.

Every day, Watson or Mrs. Brewer would say to Emily that she wasn’t just adopted, she was chosen. And she was very, very special.

I wished Mom and Dad had told me that so I wouldn’t have had to find out on my own when I was 13 and completely shocked by the news.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“All week I kept the awful secret of my adoption to myself. I didn’t even tell Stacey what I’d discovered, and Stacey is my best friend in the world. I wanted to talk to Stacey, but I couldn’t. Not yet. There must, I thought, be some terrible reason for keeping my adoption a secret, but what could the terrible reason be?”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“All of a sudden it dawned on me. I knew. I just knew. I was adopted, and my adoption papers were in there. If I were adopted, that would explain why I didn’t look like anyone in my family, why I didn’t act like anyone in my family, and why there were so few pictures of me. I wasn’t Mom and Dad’s real kid. I was an unwanted baby, or an orphan like Emily Michelle.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“Well,” Kristy went on, “the pediatrician says Emily isn’t making as much progress as she’d expected. Plus, Emily has some emotional problems. She’s started having these nightmares — at least, we think she’s having nightmares — and she wakes up screaming. ‘Me! Me!’” (Kristy pronounced the word as if she were saying “met,” but leaving the “t” off the end.)

“‘Me,’” she informed us, “is what Vietnamese children say for ‘Mama’ or ‘Mommy.’ Plus, she seems scared of everything: the dark, loud noises, trying new things, and being separated from any of us, especially Mom and Watson. Doctor Dellenkamp isn’t too worried about the fears, even though Mom and Watson are. The doctor says the fears are a delayed reaction to all the upheaval in Emily’s life. You know, losing her mother, going to the orphanage, getting adopted, moving to a new country. The doctor says Emily will outgrow the fears and nightmares. She’s more worried about Emily’s speech, and even how she plays. She says she doesn’t play like a two-year-old yet. She still thinks Emily will catch up, though.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“Later, Mom found the pictures of Mimi. We compared pictures of Mimi at twelve to pictures of me at twelve. We could have been twins. That night, I slept with one of the pictures of Mimi under my pillow.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“And believe it or not, you look very much the way Mimi did when she was young.” “I do?” I almost began to cry again.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“This, I thought, must be full of pictures of me. But it wasn’t. Not exactly. It was full of pictures of Janine and me.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“Mary Anne checked the record book. “Claud,” she said, “you’re free that night. Want the job?” “Of course!” I replied.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“My sister and I went downstairs together.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“logistics”?)”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“Goodness, thought Dawn. Aren’t two-year-olds supposed to be over that business of putting things in their mouths? Yes, they are, she told herself, realizing something: Emily was not like other two-year-olds she knew.

She thought of Marnie Barrett and Gabbie Perkins, kids us club members sit for. Both Marnie and Gabbie, especially Gabbie, are talkers. (Gabbie’s a little older than Marnie.)

Gabbie is toilet-trained and Marnie is working on it. Both girls can put simple puzzles together. When they color, their drawings are becoming identifiable. And Gabbie has memorized and can sing long songs with her older sister.

Emily, on the other hand, was nowhere near toilet-trained. Her favorite toys were baby toys like stacking rings. When she got hold of crayons, she just scribbled. And her vocabulary consisted of a handful of words and a lot of sounds (such as “buh” or “da”) that she used to mean a variety of things.

Yet, Emily was smiley and giggly and cheerful. She was affectionate, too, and tried hard to please her new family.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“So where were the pictures of me? I turned to the beginning of the album to see if I’d missed anything, like a picture of Mom and Dad bringing me home from the hospital. I hadn’t missed a thing.

I began looking at the pictures of Janine and me again. I looked at them carefully. We don’t look a thing alike now, but maybe we’d looked alike when we were little, when our parents dressed us in matching clothes and gave us the same haircuts.

Nope. We barely looked related. When I thought about it, not only do I not look like Janine, I don’t look like my parents, either, although Janine looks exactly like Dad.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“I felt invisible. Nobody had said anything to me since that comment about the celebratory salad. I wished desperately that Mimi were alive. If she were, she’d have been sitting right next to me and she would have known how I was feeling.

She’d have shared in Janine’s triumph, but then she would have said to me, “Tell me, my Claudia, how was your club meeting today? Did you get any baby-sitting jobs?” Mimi always knew the right thing to say.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“Kristy said, “I have some business to discuss.” She adjusted her visor. “Well, it’s not exactly business, but you should know what’s going on with Emily Michelle right now.” (We try to keep each other informed about problems with kids the club sits for.)

“With Emily?” Mary Anne repeated. “Is something wrong? Is it serious?” (Mary Anne gets worked up very easily.)

“I — I don’t know. I mean no, well … yes.” Kristy drew in a breath. “Okay. This is it. You know how Doctor Dellenkamp says Emily is language-delayed?”

The rest of us nodded. We knew, and it made sense. Emily had grown up in Vietnam, where the people around her spoke a different language and part of her life had been spent in an orphanage where she probably didn’t get a lot of attention. So it was no wonder that at two, she didn’t speak much English.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“People kept looking at Janine and then looking at me. I could just tell they were all thinking, I can’t believe you’re sisters. Then they would ignore me and congratulate Janine.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search

“I absolutely can’t stand science, especially biology, which was what we were studying. I couldn’t keep all those terms straight: cell and nucleus, species and phylum and genus, RNA and DNA and who knows what else.

You know what is really stupid? The word species. If you have two different kinds of animals or something, then you have two species. But if you have only one kind, then you still have a species. Why not a specie? Or a specy? You don’t have two cats and one cats. Oh, well.”
― Ann M. Martin, Claudia and the Great Search