{"id":21998,"date":"2017-09-26T07:30:35","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T11:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=21998"},"modified":"2017-09-26T07:30:35","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T11:30:35","slug":"fabulous-first-lines-2017-round-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=21998","title":{"rendered":"Fabulous First Lines of 2017 (Round 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the second of a projected trio of posts about irresistible first lines in 2017 MG and YA books. The first post, Fabulous First Lines of 2017 (Round 1)<\/a>, divided them into categories, and while I’m tempted to do that here, there’s also something appealing about letting the flow and juxtapositions of this collection of openers speak for themselves.
\nWhat qualities of first lines hook readers?\u00a0Happily, there is no formula. Some lines stand out because they take us by surprise, or enchant us with brilliant images, or appeal to our moods for suspense, dread, gentleness, adventure, humor, mystery, kindredness, delight, even moods for the familiar. What I would say is that all good opening lines\u00a0project a certain confidence\u2014bold or quiet. They announce or unfold the beginning of a story in such a way that the reader thinks, “Ah, I can relax;\u00a0I’m in the hands of a\u00a0true storyteller.”
\n
\nI’ve chosen some of these because they made me want to get to know the narrator or main character, others because I wanted to be taken on a journey by a clever or quirky author’s mind, or because they made me laugh, or see vividly, or because my curiosity was captivated. And so on\u2014all of the reasons\u00a0we all choose books and keep reading.
\nThe one downside of collecting the first lines is the knowledge that I can’t catch up with the reading.
\n******
\nIn 1848, London smelled awful. I’m not sure why this surprised anybody. If I had been around then and somebody had said, “Hyacinth, if every toilet in town flows directly into the river Thames, will the city smell like a rose garden in a chocolate factory?” I’m pretty sure I would have said, “Um, no.”
\n\u2014Hyacinth and the Secrets Beneath<\/em> by Jacob Sager Weinstein (Random House)
\nTell me what you can’t forget, and I’ll tell you who you are.
\n\u2014Marlena<\/em> by Julie Buntin (Henry Holt)
\n“Maddie, can you please hold still! For one more\u00a0murfnurt.<\/em>”
\n\u201414 Hollow Road<\/em> by Jenn Bishop (Knopf)
\nA dragon was dead.
\nA giant black and purple fire-breathing dragon from the very pits of hell itself was dead somewhere outside the castle. Thorns were falling from the battlements like rain, making curiously pleasant wooden sounds on the grounds of the bailey.
\n\u2014Once Upon a Dream: A Twisted Tale<\/em> by Liz Braswell (Disney Press)
\nPrologue
\nOn the day my grandmother got arrested, I found out I was pregnant.
\n<\/span>With triplets.
\n<\/span>Yikes.
\n<\/span>\u2014Once in a Blue Moon Lodge<\/em> by Lorna Landvik (University of Minnesota Press)<\/span>
\nThe smell of home for him, more than anything else, was the smell of a girl he didn’t know.
\n\u2014The Whole Thing Together<\/em> by Ann Brashares (Delacorte)
\nMonday morning was the worst possible time to have an existential crisis, I decided on a Monday morning, while having an existential crisis.
\n\u2014Noteworthy<\/em> by Riley Redgate (Amulet)
\nI know two things for a fact.
\nMy parents are good people.
\nAnd ever since I can remember; they’ve been angry about almost everything.
\n\u2014The Lines We Cross<\/em> by Randa Abdel-Fattah
\nIt’s no fun shivering when you’re wearing handcuffs.
\nIt doesn’t help to be seasick, either.
\n\u2014Scar Island<\/em> by Dan Gemeinhart (Scholastic Press)
\nPrologue: I have grown in strength inside her. Filled her cells with mine until we must split apart. It’s not my choice\u2014that’s how it’s always been for us.
\n\u2014More of Me<\/em> by Kathryn Evans (Amulet)
\nWhen I was fourteen, my mother told me there was no such thing as unconditional love.
\n“I could stop loving you at any time,” my mother said.
\n\u2014What Girls Are Made Of<\/em> by Elana K. Arnold (Carolrhoda Lab)
\nI’m on the toilet at the 9:30 Club, and I’m wondering how mermaids pee.
\n\u2014The Upside of Unrequited<\/em> by Becky Albertalli (Balzer + Bray)
\nIf I seem a little weird or high strung or just plain off, don’t worry. I’m not nuts.
\n\u2014Antisocial<\/em> by Jillian Blake (Delacorte)
\nI am at the top of a hill, and although I know I have done something terrible I have no idea what it is.
\n\u2014The One Memory of Flora Banks<\/em> by Emily Barr (Philomel)
\nOn the morning we are to leave for our Grand Tour of the Continent, I wake in bed beside Percy. For a disorienting moment, it’s unclear whether we’ve\u00a0slept together<\/em> or simply slept together.
\n\u2014The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue<\/em> by Mackenzi Lee (Katherine Tegen Books)
\n“Check out the pig!”
\n\u2014That Thing We Call a Heart<\/em> by Sheba Karim (HarperTeen)
\nI swore I wouldn’t come back here this summer, not to Mrs. Wardwell’s foghorn voice and blisters the size of nickels.
\n\u2014Grit<\/em> by Gillian French (HarperTeen)
\nIn three weeks, Noemi Vidal will die\u2014here, in this very place.
\nToday is just practice.
\n\u2014Defy the Stars<\/em> by Claudia Gray (Little, Brown)
\nMy sister is in the memory hole.
\nShe has been disappeared, vanished, eliminated, eradicated.
\n\u2014Bang<\/em> by Barry Lyga (Little, Brown)
\nThere was a time, not so long ago, when you couldn’t have a great party in our town without Crazy Chicken.
\n\u2014We Are Party People<\/em> by Leslie Margolis (FSG)
\nThis is the story of Winifred, Wilfred, and Zebediah; Crying Alice; and Flying Bob. It is in part the story of Thomasina and Old Tom. It is only in small part my story, but I get to do the telling.
\n\u2014The Night Garden<\/em> by Polly Horvath (FSG)
\nTimes like now, as I hide behind a stack of gym mats holding Cayden’s head down so he won’t get clawed, I wish Pearl was here.
\n\u2014Oddity<\/em> by Sarah Cannon (Feiwel and Friends)
\nWhat’s surprised me most about seeing my sister dead is the lingering smirk on her face.
\n\u2014I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter<\/em> by Erika L. Sanchez (Knopf)
\nEight mornings before running away, I found myself at McDonald’s, wondering about the direction of my life.
\n\u2014Down and Across<\/em> by Arvin Ahmadi (Viking)
\nThe transaction took less than a minute. The red-haired girl slid the completed worksheet across the table just as the boy in the Blackhawks shirt walked by. She didn’t look up. And the boy didn’t even pause as he slid the worksheet into his notebook, dropping a wrinkled five-dollar bill onto the table in its place.
\nThe girl palmed the five without taking her eyes off of her book.
\nNeither one of them noticed the two men watching from the corner of the library. They didn’t notice as the stocky man gave a subtle nod. They didn’t notice the taller man snap a photo.
\n—The Ambrose Deception<\/em> by Emily Ecton (Disney-Hyperion)
\nThe morning after I dropped out of high school, I woke up before dawn in my father’s empty house thinking about the slow death of the universe.
\n\u2014Things I’m Seeing Without You<\/em> by Peter Bognanni (Dial)
\nCorinne La Mer dove through the waves. Streaks of light illuminated the golden sand beneath her and shone on a large pink shell half-buried on the seafloor, just out of reach.
\n\u2014Rise of the Jumbies<\/em> by Tracey Baptiste (Algonquin)
\nIn Which Morven’s Denholm Is Turned into a Frog
\nThe scream was very loud and went on for a very long time.
\nPrincess Anya, who was reading in the castle library, ignored it at first but eventually lifted her head from her book to listen.
\n\u2014Frogkisser<\/em> by Garth Nix (Scholastic Press)
\nSnow fell softly outside the Heartwood Hotel. It was sleepy snow, the kind that took its time to reach the ground. Mona the mouse watched through a small window in the ballroom, leaning against the handle of her dandelion broom. It was so quiet she could almost hear the flakes touch down.
\n\u2014<\/em>Heartwood Hotel: The Greatest Gift<\/em> by Kallie George, illus. by Stephanie Graegin (Disney-Hyperion)
\nO.
\nAb Aeterno
\nAccess Level: Restricted [Platinum Black]
\nRecords of December 31, 95 AD, are not available to the general public.
\nPlease refer to Archive 12-A11B for original datastream.
\nRecorder Empra McCarthy sat in the bleachers of the\u00a0Amphitheatrum Flavium<\/em>, her pregnant belly round as a globe under her indigo stola.
\n\u2014<\/em>Invictus<\/em> by Ryan Graudin (Little, Brown)
\nDay 1, 8:47 A.M.
\nAboard\u00a0Genesis 11
\n<\/em>“You all know why you’re here.”
\nThere are ten of us at the table. We all nod like we even have a clue.
\n\u2014<\/em>Nyxia<\/em> by Scott Reintgen (Crown)
\nA Grave is to Think
\nYou should know that I died a long time ago, and that I was young when I died. But that doesn’t matter much to me anymore. I’ve been in the Catskills for longer than Rip Van Winkle. I’ve seen a town flooded for a reservoir. I’ve watched beetles chew leaves all summer until the mountain’s scalp showed.
\n\u2014The Grave Keepers<\/em> by Elizabeth Byrne (HarperTeen)
\nSo I didn’t handle the mugging as well as I could have.
\n\u2014<\/em>The Epic Crush of Genie Lo<\/em> by F.C. Yee (Amulet)
\nA Word from the Malefactor
\nLight a candle and step close to the looking glass. Time is short, and we cannot delay.
\nIn another time, in another world, you would not have been worth the slightest flicker of my gaze. However, even I cannot break the terms of our contract.
\n\u2014The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding: A Fiendish Arrangement<\/em> by Alexandra Bracken (Disney-Hyperion)
\nThere’s this dream
\nI’ve been having
\nabout my mother
\nthat scares
\nthe holy night
\nout of me,
\nand each time I wake
\nfrom it
\nI’m afraid to open
\nmy eyes
\nand face
\nthe world that awaits, the
\nfractured world
\nthat used to make sense,
\nbut now seems
\ndisjointed–islands of possibility
\nthat float by–like
\na thousand puzzle pieces
\nthat just don’t fit
\ntogether anymore.
\nSo I think
\nof Chapel
\nand grab hold
\nof the only other thing
\nthat matters.
\nMy guitar.
\n\u2014<\/em>Solo<\/em> by Kwame Alexander with Mary Rand Hess (Blink)
\n*****
\nStay tuned for Round 3 in December. And feel free to send me (or post in the comments) your favorite first lines not already mentioned in the first two rounds. Thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MG and YA openers exceptionally good at drawing readers in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}