Sunday, November 20, 2016

Everybody Reads YA Sunday - Riches To Rags





Dylan Jones, seventh grader at Langdon Middle School lives the good life. His family has money. He gets most everything he wants. 

Even so, everybody likes Dylan because he is a happy go lucky kid.  Miss Wickware, his seventh grade history teacher, tells the class they will be studying the United States in the late 1800s for the next few weeks. Everybody will be expected to present an oral report on a subject that is drawn from a box. Dylan draws The Orphan Train.

A penniless Dylan finds himself at the train station in New York in 1875 and he is as scared and unsure as the children getting ready to ride the Orphan Train.

How will Dylan make it when money is nowhere to be found?



Excerpt
“Daddy, we don’t want to go with them. We want to stay with you.” His lips were quivering and his eyes filled with tears.

The man stood. “I done told you, since your mama died I can’t care for you. Now, you will do what I tell you.” He turned to walk away but the boy grabbed his arm.

“Daddy…” The man shoved the little boy, making him fall, landing hard on the cement. Both boy and baby were now crying and Dylan noticed not one person stopped to help.

“Hey,” Dylan yelled, “maybe you need to man up and go talk to the lady yourself. It takes a really brave man to push a little boy around.” Dylan’s face was purple with anger.

“This ain’t none of your concern, kid,” the man yelled over his shoulder as he practically ran through the door, escaping his kids screams.

“You can’t leave them here, you gutless wonder!” Dylan yelled, but their father was long gone. “People can’t just throw their kids away,” he muttered, picking up the screaming baby, afraid she would get stepped on.

“It happens all the time.”

Dylan turned to see a boy, a few years older than himself, leaning against the wall. He was dressed in dirty long pants and a shirt that seemed to have more holes than material.



Riches to Rags is Book Five of the Wickware Sagas.  There are four more stories of students in Miss Wickware’s history class that find themselves transported back in time to meet the object of their school reports.

Billy Cooper's Awesome Nightmare
Ride of a Lifetime
Flash to the Past
Bumped Back In Time
Check them all out at…

The Wickware Sagas also comes in a printed version with all five stories!





 

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