Breakfast Served Anytime
Page 19
Instead, I ended up at the University of Kentucky, where I owe sincere thanks to my unparalleled English and Classics professors who encouraged my writing and gave me an education I wouldn’t trade for anything and who in my estimation deserve paychecks equal to or greater than that of the basketball coach — which is not to say I don’t love the basketball, because oh, how devotedly I do.
Generous early readers, teacher and librarian colleagues, angels of the Morris Book Shop, the unforgettable Mr. Walsh, who in eleventh grade made us memorize Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and made all the difference — what if they don’t see these acknowledgments? They’re busy! There’re a thousand laudable reasons they might miss them, and anyway, they deserve so much more. Grateful arms thrown around their necks. Handwritten thank-you notes sent in the mail, brownies made with humility and love. That and more is what’s coming to them and to the following, as time and geography allow: Everyone at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, where all the magic happens. Randi Ewing, this book’s fairy godmother from the start. Sarah and Molly and Amy, keepers of all the secrets. The YA Novel Discovery Contest and the She Writes community, who honored this book and set the adventure in motion. The ladies of the Young Women Writers Project, especially Elizabeth Kilcoyne, Annie Griggs, and Annie Bradford. The Kentucky Governor’s Scholars Program and Governor’s School for the Arts, a golden part of my — and so many other lucky people’s — story. Elizabeth Kaplan, agent extraordinaire. Nicole Raymond and her fellow wizards at the magnificent Candlewick Press, where I’m speechlessly honored that this book has found a home. Most of all, my wondrous, irreplaceable family — the cherished one I was born into, the one I was fortunate enough to marry into, the one I find in my friends, and the one I created with Huston Combs (Distinguished Eccentric and modern-day Atticus Finch if ever there was one), who is directly responsible for this book’s existence and so much else that is good in my life, especially our wonder boys, who I hope will always treasure books as much as they do right now. I love you all so fiercely, I can just barely stand it. Thank you.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2014 by Sarah Combs
Butterfly images copyright © 2014 by Francesco Carta fotografo/Getty Images
Cover photographs: copyright © 2014 by JFB/Getty Images (booth);
copyright © 2014 by Francesco Carta fotografo/Getty Images (butterflies)
Excerpt from Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White copyright 1952 by E. B. White, used by permission of the E. B. White Estate.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2014
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2013944002
ISBN 978-0-7636-6791-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7636-7047-4 (electronic)
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
visit us at www.candlewick.com