Comfort has attended nearly 250 funerals already - and is happy to give you hints on the appropriate behavior at such sad occasions. Her family operates the funeral home in Snapfinger.

'I come from a family with a lot of dead people' is how Deborah Wiles begins Each Little Bird That Sings, a sweet (though definitely not sappy) exploration of a 10-year-old's realization that life is full of surprises, both good and bad. Fans of some of the classics, old and new, of children's fantasy (like Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials) will enjoy this as well.Įach Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles, paperback, 276 pages Along with her new friend Gabriel, whose father had a long ago connection to The Timekeeper, Silver faces terrible dangers and difficult choices. To her peril, Silver realizes that two evil adults - Abel Drinkwater and Regalia Mason - are both desperate to find the Timekeeper for reprehensible reasons of their own. Whoever controls the clock, controls time itself.

Silver discovers that an ancient and mysterious clock, The Timekeeper, is somehow at the heart of the time distortions. Rokabye, in an ancient, sprawling mansion called Tanglewreck (which holds powers and secrets of its own). What - or who - is behind these unusual occurrences? Eleven-year-old Silver, whose parents and sister disappeared a few years before, lives with her cruel guardian, Mrs. Plus, a wooly mammoth, long thought extinct, is seen near the River Thames. The Time Tornadoes (and disappearances) are happening with increasing frequency and intensity. It was the first of the Time Tornadoes.' What we soon discover is that time is behaving very strangely in London – it's slowing to a standstill and then speeding up crazily. Tanglewreck, Jeanette Winterson's first novel for kids, begins this way: 'At six forty-five one summer morning, a red London bus was crossing Waterloo Bridge.' It isn't until you read on a little more that you get to these lines: 'The bus and its passengers were never found. Sometimes a good first line just opens the door a crack. Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson, paperback, 416 pages

Book crush nancy pearl