Belle Teal
Authors: Ann Martin
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Praise for
ANN M. MARTIN'S
Belle Teal
“You will love Belle, her mom, and Gran. This family of women knows how to raise a young one to stand up for what's right.”
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Book Sense Children's 76 Picks
“Honest and moving . . . Preteens will relate to Belle Teal, whose observations provide an eye-popping introduction to social and personal injustice.”
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Publishers Weekly
, starred review
“Her voice is so convincing that we understand at all times where she's coming from. . . . There's not a single false note; the characters she tells us about are all real ones we believe in completelyâand consequently care about. And the story she tells seems right and inevitable, as all good stories do.”
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Book Page
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“A genuinely moving tale about the necessity to reach out to others, even when it's difficult.”
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Kirkus Reviews
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“A thoughtful novel about significant issues . . . Belle Teal learns that not everything is as it seems, and so will readers of this provocative book.”
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Palo Alto Weekly
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“Considerable child appeal and heart . . . a solid piece of work with an absorbing plot.”
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School Library Journal
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“With the same sincere and empathetic handling of grade-school life that made her Baby-sitters Club books so popular, Martin here deftly draws a more complicated portrait of a racially integrating fifth-grade class. . . . The writing is graceful and easy, with Belle Teal's narration distinctly and convincingly evoked.”
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Horn Book
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Publishers WeeklyÂ
Best Book of the Year
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Child Magazine
Best Book of the Year
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For my nephew,
Henry Raynsford McGrath, with love.
Special thanks to Liz Szabla, Jean Feiwel, Laura Godwin, and especially to Pat Skarda, who set the story in motion.
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Things to Do from Belle Teal's World
G
ran's vegetable garden has been a pure delight this year. I am sitting in the middle of it, and even though it is September, I am surrounded by bush beans and cucumbers and carrots and peppers and peas. We put the peas in early this year, Gran and me, so early that we had one good crop, and then we put in some more and had another good crop.
Gran, she is amazing, even if she has become a little forgetful. She can figure out how to do just about anything. And she can always see the good in people and situations, like in that song about accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. Sometimes when our radio is not on, I hear Gran making her own music in our kitchen. She sings, “You got to ac-
cent
-tchu-ate the positive, e-
lim
-mi-nate the negative, and latch
on
to the affirmative. Don' mess with Mr. In Between . . .” Now me, I would sing at the top of my lungs, but Gran says that is not ladylike and she always sings nice and low and soft.
My journal is spread across my bare knees, but at this very moment I am not writing in it. My head is so stuffed full of birdsongs and insect music and thoughts about the last day of summer vacation that there is no room for concentrating on writing. Also, the sun is hot. Beating down hot. It has been one long, simmering summer. I don't remember a summer quite like it, here in our hills. Mama and Gran and me, we sleep most nights with the windows wide open, not caring about all the flies and mosquitoes and no-see-ums that fly inside to escape the heat with us.
I wiggle my toes in the dirt and inspect a scab on my knee. I wish Mama was home for my last day of summer freedom, but she went into Coker Creek this morning to begin her new job. Mama, she starts jobs like I start library books â one right after the other. I think she is overlooking one of the key things about having a job, which is sticking with it. A library book is meant to be finished, but a job is meant to be stuck with. Mama means well, though. She just wants more for our family.
Our family has been Mama and Gran and me for as long as I can remember. Daddy, he died before I turned one, and Grandpop was gone before Mama married Daddy. But Mama and Gran and me make a very cozy family. And I like a family that is all women. Me and Gran are real close. We spend a lot of time together, since apart from switching jobs so frequently, Mama also usually works two to three jobs all at once, depending on the time of year. Waitressing, bartending, whatever she can find. This new job in Coker Creek, it's a maid's job, at that motel off Old Route 28, at the edge of town. If I know Mama, it won't satisfy her for long.
I pat my stomach. It is full from the lunch Gran just made. Also it is on the puffy side. I have increased in size over the summer. I wonder how I am going to fit into my first-day-of-school dress, which was also my last-day-of-school dress in June. Oh, well. I am not going to dwell on that. I am going to eliminate the negative. I believe I'll head on over to Clarice's house for the rest of the afternoon. I have done all my chores except for the evening ones, and anyway Gran, she has already said, “Belle Teal, you just enjoy today. Tomorrow your school responsibilities start again.” Actually, she said that twice this morning, the second time with almost the exact same words she used the first time around, as if she didn't remember she had just said them half an hour before.
I ease back inside our little house and hide the journal under my mattress. Then I slip off my dirty shorts and pull on a pair of jeans. “Gran,” I say as I poke my head in the kitchen, “I'm going to Clarice's.”
Gran is mixing batter for corn bread. She is at the table, and the kitchen is so hot, I think I could suffocate in it. I can feel sweat forming under my hair and starting to slide down my forehead. But Gran stands there looking all tidy and cool-like. I hear her humming a tune I recognize as “G.I. Jive.”
“Gran?” I say again. “I'm going to Clarice's.”
Gran emerges from some kind of fog in her head. “Okay. Home by dinner . . . honey.”
For just a second I have this spooky feeling that she might have forgotten my name. But I shoo the thought aside and run out our door, across our yard, and down to the dirt road. It's a two-mile walk to Clarice's, and I haven't bothered with shoes. By this time of summer the soles of my feet are so hard, I wouldn't need shoes for anything but warmth, and that is not an issue.
Clarice, she once told me she sometimes gets bored on the walk between our houses if she is alone. I can't imagine that. I always use the walk for thinking. Today I am thinking about tomorrow â about the first day of fifth grade at Coker Creek Elementary, the new colored students, and wonderful Miss Casey.
Clarice and me, we have been best friends since the beginning of kindergarten, which was way back in 1957. And we have been waiting since 1959 for Miss Casey to be our teacher. We have wished for her since the moment we set eyes on her, her first day at Coker Creek, when she arrived at school all dressed up and smelling of perfume that was probably from the country of France. None of the other teachers looked like Miss Casey. Or smelled like her. I fell in love with Miss Casey that day.
I walk along the dirt road, trying to avoid the bigger rocks, watching as grasshoppers zip ahead of me in the heated air. This is the easy part of the walk, going down our hill. Coming back from Clarice's will be another story. Tomorrow I will cover part of this trip on the school bus. I wonder if any of the new colored students will be on our bus route. I don't see how, but you never know.
It's funny. The only thing me and Clarice have been able to wrap our minds around this summer is the joyful thought of sitting in Miss Casey's class for a whole year. The only thing most other folks have wrapped their minds around is the notion of letting the Negro children into our school. So far those students have been going to the colored school over in Peapack, but starting this year, some of them will be coming to Coker Creek. It makes more sense. Coker Creek Elementary is much closer to those kids' homes than the school in Peapack is.
Mama says, “You be nice to those children, Belle Teal. They'll want to see smiling faces.”
Why wouldn't I be nice to new students?
