“Kimmi, we’re in a rut,” spake Her Momness the other day. “We need some new ideas. Fresh content. Blooms and buds. Can you get on that asap, please?”

No idea what she’s talking about. But I’m quick. Think super-sonic. So I dug around and found two barkworthy new ideas: Book Beginnings and The Friday 56. Like this:

Book Beginnings is a theme where readers share the first sentence (or couple of sentences) from your current read. It’s hosted by Rose City Reader every Friday.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Frida’s Voice. Share a sentence or two from page 56 or 56% in to your current read. Sound good? Perfect! Cuz here we go:

This week our Book Beginning and Friday 56 are from All The Children Are Home, a novel by Patry Francis.

Beginning:

“I used to think that if I just stayed home, I would be safe. So when the chance come 9sic), I struck a deal with a boy so homely and tongue-tied no one else would have him: I’d put some kind of supper on the table and sleep in his bed every night and he’d bring me jigsaws. And teetering stacks of books from the library and never ask me to leave the house again. Louie was just nineteen. And me – I was even younger, thought I hadn’t felt like ag girl in a long time.”

 

Friday 56

Page 56, also from All The Children Are Home:

So what could I do? I sat with the kid on the rock, holding her hand and shushing her every time she tried to tell me something – which was about every two minutes – until the wheezing slowed down. And the whole time the stupid kid was smiling at me like I was Wyatt Earp and the Easter Bunny all rolled into one. Jeez.

About All The Children Are Home:

set in a Massachusetts mill town during the 1950s and 60,  All the Children Are Home follows the Moscatelli family–Dahlia, Louie and the foster children they’re raising as their own–through twelve tumultuous years.

Dahlia, who is the heart of the family, had a few caveats when she decided to become a foster mother: no howling newborns, no delinquents, and above all, no girls. A harrowing incident the summer before she was to leave for college left her a virtual prisoner in her own home, forever wary of the heartbreak and limitation of a girl’s life.

A decade later, all of Dahlia’s conditions have been broken and the Moscatellis have become parents to three children in long term care. They consider their family complete. But when the social worker asks them to take a six-year-old indigenous girl as a two-week emergency placement, their lives are irrevocably changed.

Sweeping in its scope and powerful in its perspective, All the Children Are Home is a complicated, multi-layered story of different people from varied backgrounds and experiences who are thrown together out of necessity.  Over time, unbreakable bonds of love and loyalty are formed as each one learns the meaning of “family.”

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Whaddya think of my two new ideas, Book Beginnings and The Friday 56? 

You can play, too! Just toss us your Friday link along with a frisbee!