Jerry Spinelli
Jerry Spinelli
Jerry Spinelli is an American writer of children's novels that feature adolescence and early adulthood. He is best known for Maniac Magee and Wringer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth1 February 1941
CityNorristown, PA
CountryUnited States of America
song heart flying
Today the mockingbird does not sound very happy. It sounds if it is coming apart. As of the very heart of itself-its song-is breaking into pieces and flying off in a hundred directions.
song morning voice
A mockingbird has moved into our neighborhood. It perches atop a telephone pole behind our backyard. Every morning it is the first thing I hear. It is impossible to be unhappy when listening to a mockingbird. So stuffed with songs it is, it can't seem to make up it's mind which to sing first, so it sings them all, a dozen different songs at once, in a dozen different voices. On and on it sings without a pause, so peppy, even frantic, as if its voice alone is keeping the world awake.
stars wall eye
As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars.
names stargirl shirts
I’m not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it.
orange mind lasts
Happy". I had not heard that word since Mr. Milgrom spoke it at the last Hanukkah. I asked him the question that had been on my mind since then. "Tata, what is happy?" He looked at me and at the ceiling and back to me. "Did you ever taste an orange?" he said.
fun stargirl carried-away
Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.
Nobody has the time, the time cannot be owned. The time is free to everyone
feelings events
Events become feelings, feelings become events
eye color empathy
We were awash in tiny attentions. Small gestures, words, empathies thought to be extinct came to life... We discovered the color of each other's eyes.
race uncomfortable humans
Or maybe you’re merely uncomfortable with uncertainty. Like the rest of the human race.
realizing
I didn't realize we were being watched. We were all being watched
laughing firsts taught
She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timid introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life
doorways fit his-smile
His smile was so wide he’d have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway
individuality fit standing-out
Why fit in when you're born to stand out?