Wait Till Helen Comes Beware of HelenHeather is such a whiny little brat Always getting Michael and me into trouble But since our mother married her father we re stuck with herour poor stepsister who lost her real mother
Beware of HelenHeather is such a whiny little brat Always getting Michael and me into trouble But since our mother married her father, we re stuck with herour poor stepsister who lost her real mother in a mysterious fire But now something terrible has happened Heather has found a new friend, out in the graveyard behind our home a girl named Helen who died wiBeware of HelenHeather is such a whiny little brat Always getting Michael and me into trouble But since our mother married her father, we re stuck with herour poor stepsister who lost her real mother in a mysterious fire But now something terrible has happened Heather has found a new friend, out in the graveyard behind our home a girl named Helen who died with her family in a mysterious fire over a hundred years ago Now her ghost returns to lure children into the pond drown I don t want to believe in ghosts, but I ve followed Heather into the graveyard and watch her talk to Helen And I m terrified Not for myself, but for Heather
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À Wait Till Helen Comes ☆ Mary Downing Hahn
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Mary Downing Hahn
I grew up in a small shingled house down at the end of Guilford Road in College Park, Maryland Our block was loaded with kids my age We spent hours outdoors playing Kick the Can and Mother, May I as well as cowboy and outlaw games that usually ended in quarrels about who shot whom In the summer, we went on day long expeditions into forbidden territory the woods on the other side of the train tracks, the creek that wound its way through College Park, and the experimental farm run by the University of Maryland.In elementary school, I was known as the class artist I loved to read and draw but I hated writing reports Requirements such as outlines, perfect penmanship, and following directions killed my interest in putting words on paper All those facts who cared what the principal products of Chile were To me, writing reports was almost as boring as math Despite my dislike of writing, I loved to make up stories Instead of telling them in words, I told them in pictures My stories were usually about orphans who ran away and had the sort of exciting adventures I would have enjoyed if my mother hadn t always interfered.When I was in junior high school, I developed an interest in complex stories I wanted to show how people felt, what they thought, what they said For this, I needed words Although I wasn t sure I was smart enough, I decided to write and illustrate children s books when I grew up Consequently, at the age of thirteen, I began my first book Small Town Life was about a girl named Susan, as tall and skinny and freckle faced as I was Unlike her shy, self conscious creator, however, Susan was a leader who lived the life I wanted to live my ideal self, in other words Although I never finished Small Town Life, it marked the start of a lifelong interest in writing.In high school, I kept a diary In college, I wrote poetry and short stories and dreamed of being published in The New Yorker Unfortunately, I didn t have the courage or the confidence to send anything there By the time my first novel was published, I was 41 years old That s how long it took me to get serious about writing The Sara Summer took me a year to write, another year to find a publisher, and yet another year of revisions before Clarion accepted it.Since Sara appeared in 1979, I ve written an average of one book a year If I have a plot firmly in mind when I begin, the writing goes fairly quickly More typically, I start with a character or a situation and only a vague idea of what s going to happen Therefore, I spend a lot of time revising and thinking things out If I d paid attention to the craft of outlining back in elementary school, I might be a faster writer, but, on the other hand, if I knew everything that was going to happen in a story, I might be too bored to write it down Writing is a journey of discovery That s what makes it so exciting.