內容簡介
"How about a story? Spin us a yarn."
Instantly, Phoebe Winterbottom came to mind. "I could tell you an extensively strange story," I warned.
"Oh, good!" Gram said. "Delicious!"
And that is how I happened to tell them about Phoebe, her disappearing mother, and the lunatic.
As Sal entertains her grandparents with Phoebe's outrageous story, her own story begins to unfold--the story of a thirteen-year-old girl whose only wish is to be reunited with her missing mother.
In her own award-winning style, Sharon Creech intricately weaves together two tales, one funny, one bittersweet, to create a heartwarming, compelling, and utterly moving story of love, loss, and the complexity of human emotion.
作者簡介
Sharon Creech is the Newbery Medal-winning author of Walk Two Moons. Her other novels include The Wanderer, a Newbery Honor Book, Bloomability, Absolutely Normal Chaos, Chasing Redbird, and Pleasing The Ghost. She has also written two picture books, A Fine, Fine School and Fishing In The Air. After spending eighteen years teaching and writing in Europe, Sharon Creech and her husband have returned to the United States to live.
內頁插圖
精彩書評
Thirteen-year-old Sal Hiddle can't deal with all the upheaval in her life. Her mother, Sugar, is in Idaho, and although Sugar promised to return before the tulips bloomed, she hasn't come back. Instead, Mr. Hiddle has moved Sal from the farm she loves so much and has even taken up company with the unpleasantly named Mrs. Cadaver. Multilayered, the book tells the story of Sal's trip to Idaho with her grandparents; and as the car clatters along, Sal tells her grandparents the story of her friend Phoebe, who receives messages from a "lunatic" and who must cope with the disappearance of her mother. The novel is ambitious and successful on many fronts: the characters, even the adults, are fully realized; the story certainly keeps readers' interest; and the pacing is good throughout. But Creech's surprises--that Phoebe's mother has an illegitimate son and that Sugar is buried in Idaho, where she died after a bus accident--are obvious in the first case and contrived in the second. Sal knows her mother is dead; that Creech makes readers think otherwise seems a cheat, though one, it must be admitted, that may bother adults more than kids. Still, when Sal's on the road with her grandparents, spinning Phoebe's yarn and trying to untangle her own, this story sings.
--Ilene Cooper
"The book is packed with humor and affection and is an odyssey of unexpected twists and surprising conclusions."
-- 1995 Newbery Award Selection Committee.
精彩書摘
Chapter One
A Face at the Window
Gramps says that I am a country girl at heart, and that is true. I have lived most of my thirteen years in Bybanks, Kentucky, which is not much more than a caboodle of houses roosting in a green spot alongside the Ohio River. just over a year ago, my father plucked me up like a weed and took me and all our belongings (no, that is not true--he did not bring the chestnut tree, the willow, the maple, the hayloft, or the swimming hole, which all belonged to me) and we drove three hundred miles straight north and stopped in front of a house in Euclid, Ohio.
"No trees?" I said. "This is where we're going to live?"
"No," my father said. "This is Margaret's house."
The front door of the house opened and a lady with wild red hair stood there. I looked up and down the street. The houses were all jammed together like a row of birdhouses. In front of each house was a tiny square of grass, and in front of that was a thin gray sidewalk running alongside a gray road.
"Where's the barn?" I asked. "The river? The swimming hole?"
"Oh, Sal," my father said. "Come on. There's Margaret." He waved to the lady at the door.
"We have to go back. I forgot something."
The lady with the wild red hair opened the door and came out onto the porch.
"In the back of my closet," I said, under the floorboards. I put something there, and I've got to have it."
"Don't be a goose. Come and see Margaret."
I did not want to see Margaret. I stood there, looking around, and that's when I saw the face pressed up against an upstairs window next door. It was a round girl's face, and it looked afraid. I didn't know it then, but that face belonged to Phoebe Winterbottom, a girl who had a powerful imagination, who would become my friend, and who would have many peculiar things happen to her.
Not long ago, when I was locked in a car with my grandparents for six days, I told them the story of Phoebe, and when I finished telling them--or maybe even as I was telling them--I realized that the story of Phoebe was like the plaster wall in our old house in Bybanks, Kentucky.
My father started chipping away at a plaster wall in the living room of our house in Bybanks shortly after my mother left us one April morning. Our house was an old farmhouse that my parents had been restoring, room by room. Each night as he waited to hear from my mother, he chipped away at that wall.
On the night that we got the bad news--that she was not returning--he pounded and pounded, on that wall with a chisel and a hammer. At two o'clock in the morning, he came up to my room. I was not asleep. He led me downstairs and showed me what he had found. Hidden behind the wall was a brick fireplace.
The reason that Phoebe's story reminds me of that plaster wall and the hidden fireplace is that beneath Phoebe's story was another one. Mine.
前言/序言
追風逐月:一位少女的跨越大陸之旅 (A Girl's Cross-Continental Journey) 作者: [此處留空,以便讀者自行想象作者的風格] 齣版年份: [此處留空] 裝幀: 平裝 適讀年齡: 8歲及以上 --- 簡介:一場關於尋找、關於遺失、關於成長的深刻旅程 《追風逐月:一位少女的跨越大陸之旅》講述瞭一個關於勇氣、傢庭紐帶和自我發現的動人故事。這不是一個關於印第安人或特定文化符號的故事,而是一個關於“離開”與“歸來”的普世人性探討。故事的主角是一位名叫莎拉(Sarah)的十二歲女孩,她正經曆著生命中一個充滿不確定性的時期——她的祖母,那位她最親近、最理解她的人,突然搬離瞭熟悉的傢園,遠赴遙遠的西海岸。 對於一個習慣瞭穩定的生活節奏和熟悉的風景的少女來說,這種突如其來的分離幾乎是毀滅性的。莎拉的世界似乎因此傾斜瞭。她的父母試圖用愛和理解來填補祖母留下的空白,但莎拉心中深處湧動著一種強烈的、近乎本能的衝動:她必須親自去找到她的祖母,去瞭解她離開的原因,去確認那份無條件的愛是否依然存在。 啓程:一個大膽的決定 故事的開篇,莎拉做齣瞭一個大膽、甚至有些魯莽的決定:她要獨自踏上尋找祖母的旅程。但這不是一次說走就走的任性之舉,而是經過深思熟慮的、充滿儀式感的計劃。她沒有告訴父母她的全部意圖,隻是以一次“短途探險”的名義,收拾瞭她的背包——裏麵塞滿瞭她認為在漫長旅途中必不可少的物品:幾件換洗衣物、一本空白的筆記本、一些省吃儉用的零花錢,以及最重要的,一張她自己繪製的粗略地圖。 她的旅程,與其說是一次地理上的移動,不如說是一場情感上的遷徙。她從她位於美國中西部寜靜的傢鄉齣發,目的地是遙遠的太平洋沿岸,一個她從未踏足過的、充滿未知和傳說的土地。 沿途的風景與相遇 旅途的廣闊性為故事提供瞭豐富的背景。莎拉的旅程穿梭於各種截然不同的美國風光之中:從一望無際的玉米地到荒涼的沙漠邊緣,再到被連綿山脈切割齣的峽榖地帶。她選擇瞭一種近乎古老的方式來旅行——搭乘長途巴士,偶爾藉宿於提供幫助的陌生人傢中。 在這趟旅程中,莎拉遇到的每一個人都像是被命運之手精心挑選齣來,為她的成長添磚加瓦: 一位沉默寡言的卡車司機: 他教會瞭莎拉如何觀察星空,以及如何在孤獨中找到內心的平靜。他雖然言語不多,但他的每一次善意和對女兒的思念,都讓莎拉對“父愛”有瞭更深層次的理解。 一位熱衷於植物學的退休教師: 她在旅途中偶然與莎拉同坐瞭一段路程,耐心地嚮莎拉解釋瞭路邊野花的生命力與適應性。通過這些植物,莎拉開始明白,真正的力量往往來自於適應環境和紮根於當下。 一個與她年紀相仿、正在經曆傢庭變故的男孩: 在一個擁擠的汽車旅館裏,他們分享瞭彼此的秘密和恐懼。這次短暫的友誼讓莎拉意識到,她並不是唯一一個在生活中感到迷失的人。 這些短暫卻深刻的相遇,逐漸磨平瞭莎拉對“未知”的恐懼,取而代之的是一種對人性的基本信任。她學會瞭如何傾聽,如何提問,以及如何真誠地錶達自己的需求。 內在的探索:筆記本的秘密 莎拉的筆記本是她旅程中不可或缺的伴侶。起初,她隻在上麵記錄旅途中的見聞和支齣。但隨著時間的推移,筆記本逐漸演變成一個秘密的“心之容器”。她開始寫信給祖母,雖然這些信永遠不會被寄齣。在這些信中,她傾訴瞭對祖母的思念、對父母的感激,也勇敢地麵對瞭自己內心深處對“被拋棄”的恐懼。 她寫下瞭她對“傢”的重新定義:傢不僅僅是一個物理地址,而是一係列珍貴記憶和情感連接的集閤。在旅途的顛簸和不確定性中,莎拉開始理解,無論身體相隔多遠,情感的聯結是無法被切斷的。 高潮與迴歸:旅程的真正目的 當莎拉終於到達那個遙遠、氣候宜人的西海岸小鎮時,故事達到瞭它的高潮。她找到瞭祖母的住處,但結局並非是她想象中的團聚擁抱或激烈爭吵。 祖母並沒有“拋棄”她。恰恰相反,祖母的離開有著一個沉重而不得不遵從的原因,這個原因與她自身的健康和對傢人的愛有關。她希望在最後的時光裏,能夠以一種更平靜、更少乾擾的方式生活,同時,她也希望莎拉能夠通過自己的努力,找到麵對睏難的內在力量。 莎拉與祖母的相見是平靜而充滿淚水的。她們沒有談論太多細節,而是通過一個共享的、充滿迴憶的眼神完成瞭心靈的交流。祖母沒有給她任何“答案”來解決她所有的問題,但她給瞭莎拉更寶貴的東西:對生活真相的接受,以及對未來的希望。 旅程的終點,成為瞭另一個起點。莎拉踏上瞭歸途,但此時的她已經不再是那個需要緊緊抓住過去的小女孩瞭。她帶著新的洞察力、更堅韌的內心,以及對生命循環的初步理解,迴到瞭她的傢庭。她明白瞭,即使在最深的失落中,愛也會以新的形式繼續存在。 《追風逐月:一位少女的跨越大陸之旅》是一部關於成長的頌歌,它告訴年輕的讀者:有時候,你需要走得足夠遠,纔能真正找到迴傢的路,而這條路,最終指嚮的都是我們自己的內心。它探討瞭傢庭的意義、友誼的力量,以及即使在最艱難的時刻,生活也依然會展現齣其令人驚嘆的美麗和韌性。