Improving vocabulary is a great place to start. It gives our children someplace higher to reach and more tools to use.
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Not surprisingly, Harold and Bobby had a table to themselves everyday at lunch. They also shared a solitary table in library, they were the only two-person basketball team in gym, and they always got their choice of seats on the bus. Life was good for our budding heroes. And that was before they discovered Bobby’s secret powers.
Jeff and Hank watched as the wire-infused cyclone raced towards their friend’s brand new truck. They stood dumbfounded in the dust. They wondered if Jerry was dead. They heard a faint screaming. Jeff and Hank ran (as best they could) to find the Grizzly balled up in eight-hundred feet of barbed wire. Through the tangle they could see that the fractured windshield looked like a spider web. Then, finally, they saw Jerry, fine but completely shaken.
Joey was outside playing in a sprinkler. I carried my giant, super-sized snowball outside and crept along the hedge between my yard and his. Like a predator in a nature documentary, I waited for just the right moment to surprise my unsuspecting prey. For a short time, I though my grand plan was foiled when he went inside. My patience paid off. I heard his mom in the kitchen tell him to turn off the sprinkler.
All that changed when, in a dark spot, in a shallow creek bed, lay the aluminum carcass of a twin engine passenger plane, barely recognizable underneath ferns, moss, epiphytes, and generally decay. It could easily be confused as a boulder or fallen tree if not for the “Pan Am” logo still visible on what was left of the tail. The guide had nothing to say, now. Clark took in a deep sigh and snapped some photos. He walked to the cockpit window and found it impossible to see through. Nearby was a door. It opened easily. Inside everything was burned, charred… silent.
Note: These next two examples are from a Young Adult novel probably not suitable for small children. Bigger kids, bigger words, bigger concepts
It was a clear, bitter-cold Minnesota morning when she left. One day after she got her driver’s license, she and Eddie from down the street left for California. It was 1960 and Huntington Beach was full of oil wells and surfers. For weeks she lived on the beach, she sang and danced, read poetry, learned to play the guitar. Her father preached about sin and damnation to his congregation while his younger daughter was vying to be the poster child what would become the hippie movement. She had found the heaven that was advertised in scripture and reserved for the devout. Peggy found work as a waitress and soon became a short order cook. Eddie bought a VW bus and was turning it into a camper but Eddie found a new love, Robert. They moved to Massachusetts. She inherited the bus.
There was a guy who was a nice guy but he was a killer and everyone knew that. He had no past, no last name, and a bleak future in this place. He was essentially a dead man, but he was a nice guy. This made people keep their distance from him both emotionally and physically. He understood and didn’t mind. Angel had no fear of anything, not pain, not death, not guilt, not love. So he lived in those worlds. In the worlds the rest of us just dabble in for flavor, he embraced and owned those worlds.
