Nikki Grimes The Poetry Zone
Nikki Grimes The Poetry Zone
Nikki Grimes The Poetry Zone

Stronger Than: Story Behind the Story

September 24, 2025 No Comments

Stronger Than

In the mid 1990’s, I began research for a pic­ture book biog­ra­phy of ground-break­ing African Amer­i­can pilot, Bessie Cole­man. The book, illus­trat­ed by E.B. Lewis was even­tu­al­ly released by Orchard Books in 2002, to much acclaim. What does Talkin’ About Bessie have to do with Stronger Than? Dur­ing the research, I learned that Bessie’s father was Choctaw. Almost imme­di­ate­ly, I began devel­op­ing a sto­ry about a Black Choctaw char­ac­ter, named Dante. The sto­ry I wrote about him, then titled Dante and the Dream Catch­er, end­ed up buried in my file cab­i­net, all but for­got­ten. Then, in 2021, while sort­ing through old files, I redis­cov­ered the story.

In the span of time that had passed, the impor­tance of own sto­ries had becomes estab­lished, and the notion of a Black author writ­ing a sto­ry that cen­tered a folk­tale of Native Amer­i­can ori­gin — name­ly The Dream Catch­er — was no longer clear-cut. Not wish­ing to over­step, I reached out to my friend, Musco­gee author Cyn­thia Leitich Smith, for advice.

“Cyn,” I wrote, do I even get to tell this sto­ry, now? Or should I just archive this man­u­script?” Cyn asked me to send the sto­ry to her. Once she’d read it, she came back with a cou­ple of ideas about the best way to move for­ward. One of Cyn’s sug­ges­tions excit­ed me: con­sid­er col­lab­o­rat­ing with a Choctaw author. I did­n’t know if it would work, but I was intrigued.

Cyn had a mentee in mind, mid­dle grade author, Sta­cy Wells. Sta­cy had­n’t pub­lished a pic­ture book, but Cyn felt the expe­ri­ence of work­ing on one with me would be instruc­tive. From my per­spec­tive, Sta­cy’s involve­ment would allow me to pull in Choctaw lan­guage and spe­cif­ic tribal/cultural ref­er­ences that I might not, oth­er­wise, have knowl­edge of or direct access to. A col­lab­o­ra­tion could be a win-win.

Our indi­vid­ual jobs were clear­ly drawn. I would focus on writ­ing the sto­ry, and Sta­cy would focus on the back-matter.

Dur­ing the process of revi­sion, I noticed that there were a pletho­ra of sto­ries about dream catch­ers. At the same time, I became increas­ing­ly aware that there were few sto­ries star­ring Black Indige­nous char­ac­ters in the mar­ket­place, peri­od. A sto­ry cen­ter­ing that par­tic­u­lar inter­sec­tion­al peo­ple group was far more impor­tant than anoth­er sto­ry about a dream catch­er. Upon that real­iza­tion, I decid­ed to shift the sto­ry, entirely.

Dante and the Dream-catch­er became Stronger Than, a sto­ry in which Dan­te’s moth­er respond­ed to his fear of night­mares by intro­duc­ing him to ances­tors on both sides of his fam­i­ly, one a sur­vivor of the Trail of Tears, and the oth­er a sur­vivor of the Tul­sa Race Mas­sacre. As Dante sought out these sto­ries on his own, at the local library, he under­stood that he came from peo­ple who were stronger than his night­mares — who were stronger than any­thing. He had every rea­son to sleep peace­ful­ly, with­out fear. And for the first time in a long time, Dante did.

This new sto­ry direc­tion filled me with pas­sion and I got busy with the revi­sion. As I leaned into it, I asked Sta­cy for Choctaw words and phras­es I might weave into the telling, and the names of her own ances­tors that I might bor­row for the new Choctaw ances­tor in the sto­ry. Along the way, we dis­cussed nuances regard­ing the his­to­ries of Native Peo­ples and African Amer­i­cans. In the exchange, I also sug­gest­ed details for her to explore in the back mat­ter she was writ­ing. In this way, I touched her back-mat­ter and she touched my sto­ry. As such, when asked how I want­ed the book to be cred­it­ed, my answer was 50–50. By Nik­ki Grimes with Sta­cy Wells did­n’t feel quite right, to me.

illustration by E.B. Lewis, for Stronger Than, written by Nikki Grimes, back matter by Stacy Wells
illus­tra­tion © E.B. Lewis for Stronger Than, writ­ten by Nik­ki Grimes, back mat­ter by Sta­cy Wells, pub­lished by Heart­drum / HarperCollins

The illus­tra­tion work is the cher­ry on top! When I was told E.B. Lewis was invit­ed to illus­trate, I could scarce­ly believe it. Talk about a full-cir­cle moment! Dante was born of my work on Talkin’ About Bessie, the book for which E.B. Lewis won his first Coret­ta Scott King Illus­tra­tor Award. That he would now be attached to this book was a spe­cial kind of sweet! I’ve no idea how E.B. feels about it, but I believe this to be divine­ly appoint­ed, and you can quote me on that.

So, now you have it. The sto­ry-behind-the-sto­ry. It’s a good one, right?

Illustrating Poems in the Attic

March 31, 2015 No Comments

Poems in the AtticA pic­ture book is not com­plete with­out the art, and I’ve been for­tu­nate to have my books illus­trat­ed by some of the finest artists in the chil­dren’s book business.

My newest pic­ture book, Poems in the Attic, was illus­trat­ed by Eliz­a­beth Zunon. Recent­ly, I asked her a few ques­tions about this project, and why she chose it. She respond­ed by giv­ing me a peek into her process! Enjoy.

Q: What made you want to illus­trate this book?

A: I real­ly iden­ti­fied with the theme of trav­el dur­ing child­hood! I was born in Albany, NY, but my father is from the Ivory Coast, West Africa. My fam­i­ly and I lived there until I was twelve years old but came back to the States almost every sum­mer, so it seems like we were always hop­ping on a plane to go some­where! I also iden­ti­fied with the daugh­ter learn­ing about her moth­er’s life through her child­hood poems. When I was in col­lege, I was giv­en a box of let­ters writ­ten by my moth­er to her par­ents while she was in col­lege. I dis­cov­ered that my moth­er and I had a lot of the same thoughts and feel­ings about life!

Elizabeth Zunon
Eliz­a­beth Zunon, illustrator

Q: What were your pri­ma­ry chal­lenges in cre­at­ing the art for Poems in the Attic?

Mak­ing sure that the moth­er looked like her­self, slow­ly aging from child­hood to teenage-hood to adult-hood on the last page took a lot of lit­tle tweaks. Also, keep­ing the two sto­ries sep­a­rate on each page was a very inter­est­ing design chal­lenge to solve. But it was great fun! Illus­trat­ing each page was like try­ing to put togeth­er a puzzle.

Q: Do you find poet­ry eas­i­er or hard­er to illus­trate than prose?  Why/why not?

Yes, I do find poet­ry a lit­tle eas­i­er to illus­trate than prose. I find that my mind’s eye wan­ders a bit fur­ther while read­ing poet­ry, giv­ing me more free­dom when I’m mak­ing the cor­re­spond­ing art.

Q: What was your process for cre­at­ing the art for Poems in the Attic?

I first looked at many ref­er­ence pho­tos of the places in the book, as I’d nev­er been to most of them. ( I did go to New Mex­i­co and vis­it the White Sands Nation­al Mon­u­ment after fin­ish­ing the book, though!) Next, I drew lit­tle thumb­nail sketch­es (with very sim­ple shapes) of each page to fig­ure out the design and com­po­si­tion of each image. I then took pho­tographs of myself pos­ing as the char­ac­ters in each illus­tra­tion so I would have real­is­tic ref­er­ence images to work from. I drew detailed sketch­es for each page, then trans­ferred my sketch­es to spe­cial paper and pro­ceed­ed to paint the illus­tra­tions. Last­ly, when all of the oil paint was dry, I added cut paper col­lage ele­ments to the illus­tra­tions fea­tur­ing the lit­tle girl read­ing her moth­er’s poems.

Elizabeth Zunon
Eliz­a­beth Zunon in the midst of an illus­tra­tion for Poems in the Attic, fea­tured here with the per­mis­sion of Eliz­a­beth Zunon.

Q: What do you have com­ing up next?

I’m work­ing on a book about a lit­tle girl spend­ing time with her great-grand­moth­er, who is very prick­ly and a lit­tle scary on the out­side. The girl learns that great-grand­moth­er is this way because of all of the his­to­ry she has lived through as an African-Amer­i­can grow­ing up in the Unit­ed States. It will be pub­lished by Lern­er in 2016.

Chasing Freedom: the Story Behind the Story

January 12, 2015 No Comments

It all start­ed in Chi­na. Yes, you read that right. The ori­gins of my book about Har­ri­et Tub­man and Susan B. Antho­ny has every­thing to do with China.

Trip to ChinaLet me explain.

In 1988, I was asked to write a few mono­logues for the­ater pieces on Amer­i­can His­to­ry that would be per­formed in a series of the­aters in Chi­na. Lat­er, after the scripts were com­plete, I invit­ed sev­er­al friends to join me in audi­tion­ing for the cast. I had no aspi­ra­tions to join the cast myself, but my friends, who were all per­form­ing artists, cer­tain­ly did. As for me, I sim­ply thought the audi­tion process would be a lark and I looked for­ward to spend­ing a fun day with a few friends. And it was fun. And fun­ny. As it turned out, the joke was on me. None of my friends made the final cut for the cast, but I did! As a result, I end­ed up going to Chi­na lat­er that year. But, back to this story.

China

The his­tor­i­cal fig­ures I chose to devel­op mono­logues about for the show were Har­ri­et Tub­man, Fred­er­ick Dou­glass, and Susan B. Anthony.

I was work­ing in library acqui­si­tions at USC at the time and was able to take advan­tage of the seem­ing­ly end­less col­lec­tion of books to be found in the Dohe­ny Library Stacks. I dove into my research with gus­to, and was excit­ed to learn that my cho­sen sub­jects were con­tem­po­raries, and that their lives fre­quent­ly inter­sect­ed. I found that bit of infor­ma­tion fas­ci­nat­ing, and won­dered just how deeply inter­con­nect­ed they were. In any event, I had no time to sat­is­fy my curios­i­ty, and so I lim­it­ed my research to the bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion I need­ed to know about each in order to write my short mono­logues. How­ev­er, I did have occa­sion to mull over cer­tain ques­tions that occurred to me: I won­dered what it would be like if Har­ri­et Tub­man and Susan B. Antho­ny had a con­ver­sa­tion. What would they talk about? What would it sound like?

After a time, I tucked those ques­tions away and, even­tu­al­ly, for­got all about them.

Talkin' about BessieIn the inter­ven­ing years, I wrote a book about avi­a­tor Bessie Cole­man, the first African Amer­i­can licensed pilot. This is a biog­ra­phy writ­ten in verse, and told from mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives. While the infor­ma­tion about Cole­man was fac­tu­al, the for­mat I cre­at­ed to tell her sto­ry was a work of fic­tion. Talkin’ About Bessie has enjoyed con­sid­er­able suc­cess, win­ning the Coret­ta Scott King Award for Illus­tra­tion and an Author Hon­or for the text.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the edi­tor began ask­ing me to con­sid­er writ­ing anoth­er book about a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure. I told him thanks, but no thanks. Every year or so, he’d raise the sub­ject again.

Final­ly, in 2008, he asked if I would con­sid­er writ­ing a book about Har­ri­et Tub­man. I laughed, think­ing to myself that every­one and his moth­er has writ­ten a book about Har­ri­et Tub­man. Why would I write yet anoth­er? And so, again, I found myself say­ing thanks, but no thanks.

Chasing FreedomTwo weeks lat­er, how­ev­er, the idea I’d had way back in 1988 resur­faced. What about cre­at­ing a con­ver­sa­tion between Har­ri­et Tub­man and Susan B. Antho­ny? That would be a new and unique treat­ment of Har­ri­et’s sto­ry. Would my edi­tor be inter­est­ed in that idea? The answer, of course, was yes. And so, with that, I got busy.

I began gath­er­ing research mate­ri­als in Cincin­nati, Ohio, with a vis­it to the Nation­al Under­ground Rail­road Free­dom Cen­ter, the most exten­sive col­lec­tion of mem­o­ra­bil­ia from that peri­od. I spent sev­er­al days hunched over rare suf­fragette meet­ing notes by Susan B. Antho­ny, slave nar­ra­tives, and oth­er valu­able lit­er­a­ture rel­e­vant to the Under­ground Rail­road, the Civ­il War, and the suf­frage movement.

Nikki Grimes, John Parker HouseLat­er, I trav­eled to Rip­ley, Ohio, to search out some of the orig­i­nal homes that served as sta­tions of the Under­ground Rail­road, includ­ing the John P. Park­er House. After a week of research, I head­ed back to Cal­i­for­nia to begin the long process of por­ing over thou­sands of pages of biogra­phies, his­to­ries, and oth­er ref­er­ence work on my sub­jects, and the his­tor­i­cal peri­od against which their sto­ries played out. Bit by bit, the man­u­script came togeth­er. And now, final­ly, this sto­ry has gone out into the world!

I hope Chas­ing Free­dom brings this time in his­to­ry alive for my read­ers, and that they real­ize we are all part of one anoth­er’s story.

To Blurb or Not to Blurb

July 17, 2014 1 Comment

Nikki GrimesI love a good read. As for a free book, that gets me sali­vat­ing as quick­ly as the offer of dark choco­late. Well, almost! So when a pub­lish­er sends me a book to blurb, my ini­tial response is ela­tion. After all, a new book promis­es the poten­tial of a new lit­er­ary adven­ture. Or it may be intro­duc­ing me to a new author (Yay!). Or it may give me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port an author that I already know and love. What could be bad about that? Well, hold on there, a minute.

To blurb or not to blurb is not as ele­men­tary a ques­tion as you might sup­pose. At least, it has­n’t been for me.

First, let me say that I’m always hon­ored to be asked to write a blurb. How­ev­er, writ­ing one invari­ably comes at the expense of my own work. It takes time to read a book crit­i­cal­ly, which is what I feel I must do if I’m going to say some­thing intel­li­gent about it. That’s time tak­en away from my own writ­ing and, trust me, there are already a host of oth­er things that do that. Then, once I’ve read the book, I may decide not to blurb it, after all, for a num­ber of rea­sons: I object to the lan­guage; I don’t find the sto­ry hope­ful (for me, a required ele­ment of chil­dren’s or YA lit); I object to sex­u­al ele­ments (feel free to call me a prude. You would­n’t be the first!); I believe the book would ben­e­fit from anoth­er revi­sion; or I just plain don’t think the book is all that good. No mat­ter what rea­son I have for ulti­mate­ly decid­ing not to pen said blurb, the author—often, though not always a friend—is dis­ap­point­ed. I hate that. And it does­n’t much mat­ter that I warned the author and edi­tor going in that there’s no guar­an­tee I’ll write a blurb. Every­one is still dis­ap­point­ed, and I feel bad about that.

But, say the book checks all of my box­es, and I do write a blurb. While it may be used for mar­ket­ing pur­pos­es, it may nev­er show up on the book’s cov­er. And, even if it does, how impor­tant was that blurb, any­way? I hon­est­ly don’t know.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to be respon­si­ble for hurt feel­ings. And if I could offer some­thing use­ful in the way of cri­tique, it’s already too late. Besides, I real­ly need to con­cen­trate on writ­ing my own books. What with the demands that go along with main­tain­ing a career in lit­er­a­ture, as well as the ordi­nary demands of every­day life, I find pre­cious lit­tle time to write as it is.

To blurb or not to blurb? I’ve final­ly land­ed on the only answer that makes sense for me: Not.

The Writing Process Blog Tour

June 9, 2014 2 Comments

Have you ever been on a blog tour? This is my first time being part of one. Blame Chil­dren’s Poet Lau­re­ate, Kenn Nes­bitt. He’s the one who roped me into this! Seri­ous­ly, though, I’m hap­py to join the My Writ­ing Process Blog Tour. I hope you can take some­thing mean­ing­ful from my respons­es to the four ques­tions posed.

WHAT AM I WORKING ON NOW? 

bk_bronxAs always, I’m jug­gling projects. I seem to be aller­gic to work­ing on one man­u­script at a time.

First, I’m waist-deep into a Bronx Mas­quer­ade sequel, which means I’m too far in to turn back, but not so far that I’ve ceased shak­ing in my boots for fear I won’t be able to live up to my own expec­ta­tions, let alone the expec­ta­tions of my fans. Yikes! But I press on.

I’m also work­ing on a nov­el-in-verse for Boyds Mills, pub­lish­er of Words With Wings.

Planet Middle SchoolLast­ly, I’m writ­ing a mid­dle-grade col­lec­tion of poet­ry inspired by poems/poets of the Harlem renais­sance. This last is for Blooms­bury, pub­lish­er of my nov­el-in-verse Plan­et Mid­dle School.

HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS IN MY GENRE? 

First of all, I work in more than one genre, so there’s that! Besides that, I’m not sure this ques­tion is answer­able, at least not by me. I know that my work is dis­tinct, per­haps in part because it is char­ac­ter-dri­ven. Or per­haps it is that my poet­ry is com­pact, yet always deliv­ers an emo­tion­al punch. Yes. That’s it. In any case, it is this aspect of my work that is most often com­ment­ed on, so let’s go with that.

WHY DO I WRITE WHAT I WRITE? 

In gen­er­al, I look for sub­ject mat­ter that allows me to address those issues I feel affect the lives of young read­ers, and that I believe need to be dis­cussed and explored. I wrote The Road to Paris because I did­n’t find many books tack­ling the often-dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ences of chil­dren caught up in the fos­ter-care system.

Road to Paris Almost Zero Words with Wings

I wrote Almost Zero: A Dya­monde Daniel Book to address the sub­ject of enti­tle­ment because I see this trend every­where, and it dis­turbs me. I felt com­pelled to speak into it.

I wrote Words With Wings because I fear this gen­er­a­tion has for­got­ten the val­ue of day­dream­ing and I’m hop­ing my book will spark dis­cus­sion of this top­ic, and per­haps inspire a bit of day­dream­ing, along the way.

Chasing FreedomSome­times, of course, I write a book sim­ply because a cer­tain sto­ry cap­tures my imag­i­na­tion or curios­i­ty. Chas­ing Free­dom, a book com­ing out next year with Orchard Books, is one such title. It’s an imag­ined con­ver­sa­tion between Har­ri­et Tub­man and Susan B. Antho­ny, inspired by my fas­ci­na­tion with both women, and the fact that their extra­or­di­nary lives hap­pened to have inter­sect­ed, a fact which still gives me tingles!

WHAT IS MY WRITING PROCESS? 

Every book is dif­fer­ent. Since I write across gen­res, and age ranges, there is no one, con­sis­tent pat­tern to the way I work. How­ev­er, I sup­pose there are a few commonalities.

Let’s see: I focus on writ­ing a com­plete draft before I do any edit­ing. In fact, I muz­zle my inter­nal edi­tor dur­ing that orig­i­nal draft. She is not invit­ed to the par­ty, nor is she allowed to speak until I begin work on the sec­ond draft! From then on, I’m in revi­sion mode.

With each draft, I try to focus on some­thing spe­cif­ic through­out, whether that’s tense agree­ment, con­vert­ing plain prose into more lyri­cal lan­guage, or trans­form­ing infor­ma­tion­al pas­sages into more dynam­ic dia­logue, and so on. With each pass, I’m hon­ing in on one par­tic­u­lar element.

I revise and tweak an annoy­ing amount—just ask my edi­tors! As a rule, I know I’m done when I find myself mak­ing changes that are no longer improvements.

What else? Hmmm. As a rule, I don’t try to write sequen­tial­ly. I approach my sto­ries like jig­saw puz­zles. I con­cen­trate on devel­op­ing the indi­vid­ual pieces of a sto­ry, then fig­ure out how those pieces best fit togeth­er. This approach keeps me from feel­ing over­whelmed, espe­cial­ly if the sto­ry I’m work­ing on is quite com­plex, with lots of mov­ing parts. (This saved me from los­ing my mind when I wrote Bronx Mas­quer­ade, a nov­el in 18 voic­es!) In fact, this approach helps me when writ­ing pic­ture book texts, as well. It cer­tain­ly aid­ed me while I worked on Poems in the Attic, a Lee & Low title that comes out this fall. Okay! I think that’s it for process. If you want to get any more out of me, you’ll have to attend one of my work­shop intensives!

I hope you’ll read Kenn Nes­bit­t’s arti­cle, my pre­de­ces­sor in this Writ­ing Process Blog Tour.

Nik­ki

Halfway to Perfect

March 6, 2013 No Comments

Halfway to PerfectThe notion of phys­i­cal per­fec­tion is noth­ing new, despite the fact that no such thing exists. Most of us girls grew up on teen mag­a­zines that spoon-fed us the idea of striv­ing for body types they told us were beau­ti­ful, desir­able, “per­fect.” What has this led to? In case you haven’t noticed, the obese among us are not the only ones dri­ving the ever-bur­geon­ing diet indus­try. Lots of aver­age-sized, bare­ly volup­tuous, and even skin­ny-min­nies have fall­en into the trap, too.

What’s all this got to do with kids? Plen­ty, I’m sor­ry to say. I’ve had friends, who par­ent 7- and 8‑year-old girls, tell me their lit­tle ones bemoan the fact that they are “fat­ter” than some­one in their class.  These girls, these chil­dren, have already made the dread­ed “D” word part of their reg­u­lar vocab­u­lary. Even the skin­ni­est among them become despon­dent when they real­ize they are not as skin­ny as the girl next door. Con­ver­sa­tion on the play­ground, these days, includes dis­cus­sions of which girl in class weighs the least!

I don’t know about you, but this fright­ens me. I decid­ed it was time to address this sub­ject. I did so in a chap­ter book titled Halfway to Per­fect: A Dya­monde Daniel Book. In it, my char­ac­ters tack­le the twin top­ics of body image and healthy eating.

Damaris, Dya­mon­de’s friend, suc­cumbs to the peer pres­sure of her class­mates, and begins a self-pre­scribed diet which essen­tial­ly involves cut­ting out almost every food put in front of her. (Car­rot sticks, anyone?)

Wor­ried for her friend, Dya­monde looks for ways to help Damaris see that, far from being fat, she is prac­ti­cal­ly perfect.

As I devel­oped the sto­ry­line, I real­ized this would be a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to teach young read­ers a lit­tle some­thing about dia­betes, a dis­ease that increas­ing num­bers of chil­dren are wrestling with. My own knowl­edge of the dis­ease was some­what lim­it­ed, so it was time to put on my research hat!

In addi­tion to the infor­ma­tion I found in books like Juve­nile Dia­betes for Dum­mies, I was for­tu­nate to know a vet­er­an school nurse with whom I could con­sult. Her assis­tance proved invalu­able. Besides giv­ing me infor­ma­tion about the dis­ease and some of its treat­ments, rel­a­tive to my sto­ry­line, she also apprised me of the pri­va­cy laws gov­ern­ing the han­dling of a child’s med­ical infor­ma­tion with­in the school sys­tem. As a thank-you to my friend for all her help, I named the nurse in my sto­ry after her!

Dur­ing the course of the sto­ry, Dya­monde and Damaris get to know a class­mate with dia­betes. Through this new rela­tion­ship, both girls learn that a healthy diet is the only diet they should wor­ry about, because a healthy body is the most per­fect body of all.

In case you’re think­ing this sto­ry is all work, and no play, not to wor­ry! This is Dya­monde Daniel, after all. There are laughs along the way, and Free adds his own brand of com­ic relief, as always.

Here’s how the sto­ry starts off.  Here’s hop­ing you’ll want to grab a copy and read the rest!

You’d nev­er know it to look at her skin­ny lit­tle self, but Dya­monde loves food. If there were a class in eat­ing, she’d get an A+ every time.

Dya­monde treats all food fair­ly. She likes Mex­i­can tacos, Chi­nese egg rolls, and Cuban beans and rice. She eats beef hot dogs, turkey burg­ers, and fried chick­en. Actu­al­ly, she likes just about any­thing that has chick­en in it: noo­dle soup, pot­pie, even chick­en sal­ad sandwiches. 

Dya­monde doesn’t have much use for veg­eta­bles, but she loves broc­coli, most­ly because each spear looks like a tree. And she loves fruit—especially peach­es, cher­ries, and grapes, of any size or col­or. Dya­monde also loves some foods that oth­er peo­ple don’t, like cot­tage cheese and apple­sauce mixed together.

“Yuck!” said Free, the first time he saw her eat some. 

“Oh, puleeze!” said Dya­monde, stir­ring in a lit­tle more apple­sauce. “You just wish you had a bowlful!”

Yes. Dya­monde loved all sorts of food, but her absolute favorite food in the whole wide world was spaghet­ti and meat­balls with gar­lic bread. And guess what Mrs. Daniel had made the last time Free and Damaris came over?

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