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Overview
Lena Rosen is eleven years old, and her life is pretty typical. From babysitting her little sister to spending time with friends to sticking up for the class outcast to sneaking off to buy candy from the corner store, she is just like all of the other kids on her block. Except for one thing—she’s Jewish.
Lena’s family is the only one on all of Moose Street that isn’t Catholic or Protestant. “You’re the ones who killed Christ,” her classmates tell her. Lena knows that they’re wrong, but she can’t help feeling different.
Anne Mazer’s captivating novel of youth, difference, and acceptance is a must-read.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781453293867 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 04/14/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 119 |
| File size: | 563 KB |
| Age Range: | 9 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Mazer is the author of forty-four books for children and adults. Her seven novels include The Salamander Room, a Reading Rainbow feature selection and a 1993 ABC Children’s Choice; Moose Street, a Booklist Editors’ Choice for best book of 1992; and The Oxboy, an ALA Notable Book and a 1993 Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies. Mazer’s short stories have been included in a number of collections, and she has published her own book of short stories, A Sliver of Glass. She is also the editor of several anthologies that are widely used in classrooms from the elementary through the college level.
Mazer’s many books for young readers include the bestselling Amazing Days of Abby Hayes series, which has extended over eleven years and twenty-two books, and the Sister Magic series. Her latest work, coauthored with Ellen Potter, is Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook, which was a CLA Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts in 2011 and a 2010 Cybils Award finalist.
Anne Mazer grew up in a family of writers in upstate New York. Intending to be an artist, she enrolled in Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts before moving to Paris, where she would live for three years, studying French language and literature and beginning to write.
Mazer is the author of forty-four books for children and adults. Her seven novels include The Salamander Room, a Reading Rainbow feature selection and a 1993 ABC Children’s Choice; Moose Street, a Booklist Editors’ Choice for best book of 1992; and The Oxboy, an ALA Notable Book and a 1993 Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies. Mazer’s short stories have been included in a number of collections, and she has published her own book of short stories, A Sliver of Glass. She is also the editor of several anthologies that are widely used in classrooms from the elementary through the college level.
Mazer’s many books for young readers include the bestselling Amazing Days of Abby Hayes series, which has extended over eleven years and twenty-two books, and the Sister Magic series. Her latest work, coauthored with Ellen Potter, is Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook, which was a CLA Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts in 2011 and a 2010 Cybils Award finalist.
Read an Excerpt
Moose Street
By Anne Mazer
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1992 Anne MazerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9386-7
CHAPTER 1
Jefferson Square Park
It was Lena's morning to baby-sit. She put Deedee in the old big-wheeled black carriage with the creaky hood that stuck when you opened or shut it.
Lena covered the baby with a faded yellow blanket. Her sister's light brown hair curled around her neck and ears. Her eyes were shut, her rosy mouth slightly open, and her plump hand clutched a green toothbrush. She was already asleep.
"Be back for lunch!" Lena's mother called. "Stay in the park, and don't leave Deedee alone for a minute!"
"Don't worry, Mom." Lena tucked a bottle into one corner of the carriage. Three dimes jingled in her pocket.
"And no candy!"
"No candy," Lena echoed.
The big creaky carriage was hard to push. Lena made her way slowly down Moose Street humming a tune.
The August day was hot but not sticky. Lena turned the corner past Nancy's house and stopped in front of Catalano's candy store. She parked the carriage on the grass and ran up the stairs.
"One grape Popsicle, please."
"Five cents," said Mr. Catalano, who reminded Lena of a marshmallow bunny, all round and soft, with little red-rimmed eyes.
Lena put a dime on the wooden counter. She loved the sweet-tasting liquid in tiny wax bottles, the sticks of red and black licorice, the banana-flavored necklaces that you could both wear and eat. Every time that Lena had some money she spent it here.
Mr. Catalano dropped the dime into the cash register and slid a nickel across the counter to Lena.
"And a bag of M&M's," said Lena. She slid the nickel back across the counter and put the candy into her pocket.
On the stairs she peeled the translucent white paper with orange letters off the Popsicle and took the first careful lick.
She skipped down to the carriage.
"Mama?"
"Sshhhh ... Go back to sleep." Lena hooked her elbows around the carriage handle so she could walk and eat her Popsicle at the same time and headed for the park. She hoped Nancy would be there. Sometimes her friend had to spend the day with her grandmother.
"Hello, dear." It was a nun from St. Mary's with a big wooden cross hanging from her neck.
"Hello," Lena mumbled. Should she have said, "Hello, Sister," as Nancy did? It seemed rude not to say more. But the nun was not her sister.
Nancy made the sign of the cross whenever she met a priest or a nun on the street, and she showed Lena how to do it too. But Lena could never bring herself to make the sign of the cross, even to see what it would feel like.
Did the nun know she was Jewish? Would she still have said hello if she knew? Would she have tried to convert her? Did it bother her that Lena didn't make the sign of the cross?
And was she really bald under that black and white headpiece?
"Lena!" The twins, Mary Catherine and Catherine Mary, dressed in spotless matching outfits of yellow and pink, skipped out of the park.
"We just won the hopscotch tournament," announced Mary Catherine, the pink twin.
"This is what we got," said Catherine Mary, the yellow twin, holding up a box of colored chalk.
The twins skipped up the street. Lena took another lick from the Popsicle and turned the carriage into Jefferson Square Park.
Three boys were throwing sand at one another, a couple of girls wobbled on stilts, and some kids were sitting at a table making cabins out of Popsicle sticks. A group of teenage boys sat by the stone fountain with its trough of stagnant green water that you could smell clear across the park.
It should really be called Jefferson Round Park, thought Lena as she wheeled the carriage toward the swings. The park was a circle bounded by a street—an island of kids in a sea of painted two-family wooden houses. It was the hub, the center of the neighborhood. Everyone met there. In the winter there were snow forts and ice-skating; in the summer, hopscotch, Hula-Hoop, and roller-skating contests and crafts with high school kids hired as counselors by the city.
In the summer Lena went almost every day.
The first person she saw was Esther Brown, clutching a small paper bag to her chest.
"Hi," said Lena.
"Hey," muttered Esther. She wouldn't meet Lena's eyes.
Why did Esther slouch when she could skip or run? Lena wondered. Why did she keep her eyes on the ground when the sky was clear and fresh, and boys and girls shouted from one end of the park to another?
"See you later?" Lena called after her. Though she couldn't remember ever seeing Esther in the park for more than five minutes.
Esther didn't answer.
Lena shrugged and pushed the carriage farther into the park.
At one of the picnic tables, Roseanne, who lived across the street from Lena, was painting her nails bright red.
Roseanne was sixteen. She was short and had long black hair. Two years ago she used to baby-sit when Lena's parents went out. She always brought her curlers and her hair dryer—a pink plastic bonnet with a white hose—and set her hair and Lena's with lots of shiny pink gel. Lena loved touching the tight round curls of hair just after the curlers had been taken out. The curls felt sticky and firm until Roseanne brushed them. Then Lena's hair fell in soft graceful waves over her neck and shoulders.
"Hi, Roseanne!" she called.
"Hey, Lena." Roseanne waved her wet nails in the air.
"Lena! Lena!" From under an elm tree Nancy waved a stick at her. "Over here!"
The heavy black carriage creaked and muttered as Lena pushed it over the grass. She parked it in the shade and plopped down next to her friend.
"Got the kid again, huh?" Nancy peeled off a piece of red licorice and began to chew on it. "Want one?"
"I've got my Popsicle."
"It's dripping."
Lena gulped down the Popsicle in a few large bites and flung the two sticks into the trash can.
"Let's go over to my house," said Nancy. She lived on the top floor—the attic, really—of a red house two blocks away.
"I can't. I have Deedee. I bought some M&M's. Want some?" Lena pulled the package out of her pocket.
Nancy held out her hand and Lena poured the tiny colored candies over her palm.
The Pine brothers were riding their bikes through the park. Sam, the older one, zoomed toward the girls on stilts. One girl tottered and fell. The other girl jumped off and tried to jam one of her stilts into Sam's bike. Sam swerved away, laughing wildly.
Stewart, who was in Lena's grade, rode behind, watching his older brother. Stewart wore faded jeans and a red paisley cap, under which his face was thin and white, even at the end of summer. As he pedaled past Lena and Nancy, Lena pulled the carriage back from the sidewalk.
He passed without a threat or a word and disappeared under the elm trees, the sun and leaves making patterns of shadow and light on his back.
"Wouldn't you like to punch Sam Pine right in the nose?" Nancy said.
"What if he punched back?"
"Hit him again!"
"If he won, he'd brag to everyone."
"He wouldn't win. I'd make sure of that." Nancy dropped the last of the M&M's into her mouth and pulled another stick of licorice out of her pocket. "And when I finished with him, I'd flatten that Stewart."
"He never bothers anyone," said Lena. "It's always Sam."
"You like him?" Nancy asked slyly. "You've got a crush on Stewart Pine?"
"No!" Lena felt her face go hot. "Why would I like him, anyway? He gets all D's in school."
"The trouble with you Jewish people is that you're all brains and no muscles," Nancy said. "My mother said so."
Lena stared at her friend. Nancy was sitting in a patch of dirty grass, her strong arms and legs tanned and dusty. The licorice had stained her lips a purplish red. "You're crazy," Lena said.
"It's the truth." Nancy made the sign of the cross over her chest with a half-chewed piece of licorice. "I swear by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
"Your mother's crazy, too," Lena added.
"But don't worry," Nancy continued. "At least you don't look Jewish. Not too much, anyway."
"Thanks a lot," said Lena. If her mother had overheard them, she would retort, "What are Jewish people supposed to look like?"
Nancy studied her for a moment. "You could almost be Italian. But not your father. Your father looks Irish."
Lena was slim, with blue eyes and straight black hair that she sometimes wore in braids; her father was tall and thin with curly red hair.
"Yeah," said Lena. "We're the only Irish-Italian-Jewish family on Moose Street."
"Hey, look at me!" Danette streaked past them on a pair of new white roller skates. "I'm the fastest skater on Moose Street!"
"There goes someone who could teach Sam Pine a lesson," said Nancy. "One that he'd never forget."
Danette had strong arms, a hard head, and she loved to fight. She had beaten up girls, boys, even a teenager once.
Lena tried to stay away from her. You didn't want to get on Danette's bad side.
The carriage creaked and stirred. "Mama?"
"Your kid is up," said Nancy.
Lena peered into the carriage. The baby had kicked off her blanket and thrown her toothbrush by her feet.
"Here's your toothbrush, Deedee," Lena said. Deedee carried the green toothbrush everywhere. She loved it more than her red-and-blue rattles, more than her windup tin monkey, more than the big white bear her uncle had given her last month.
"Does she ever let go of that thing?" Nancy said.
"Mama," Deedee said again.
"Mama's not here. Just Lena. Come to Lena."
"Gaga," said Deedee. Her plump body was warm and soft.
"Gaga," echoed Nancy. "Gaga, gaga, gaga."
Deedee held out her arms to Nancy. "Gaga."
"Gaga," Nancy repeated, taking the baby. "Don't you say anything else, kid?"
At the other end of the park a girl screamed.
Lena turned to see what was happening.
The group of teenage boys by the fountain was holding a girl by her arms and legs and swinging her over the brackish water.
"One! Two! Three!"
There was a tremendous splash and a shout of laughter.
The girl flailed in the foul green water.
"They're disgusting," said Nancy. She was holding Deedee on her lap and had given her a stick of licorice to chew on.
The girl climbed out of the fountain, her shorts and blouse clinging to her body.
"It's Roseanne!" Lena got to her feet and moved toward the fountain.
Roseanne was shaking her fist at the boys.
"Don't touch me! Don't touch me!" screeched one of them in mock terror.
Another boy held out his arms. "Kiss me, Roseanne. Your perfume is so sweet."
"Roseanne!" Lena called. "Are you all right?"
But the older girl had already run from the park.
"Roseanne!" the boys shouted mockingly. "Come back, Rosie, please!"
"Creeps," muttered Lena.
"Here's your sister." Nancy had come up behind her with Deedee over her shoulder, sucking on the green toothbrush. "You owe me half your wages," said Nancy. "I'm the one doing all the work. How much does your mother pay you, anyway?"
"Fifteen cents an hour."
"The kid weighs a ton. You ought to ask for twenty-five cents."
Lena held out her arms to her little sister. Deedee pointed to the swings. "Gaga," she said.
"She wants a ride," said Nancy. "You're going to have to do it. I'm going home."
"Sure," said Lena. "I'll see you later."
She glanced at the fountain. The teenage boys had disappeared. Stewart Pine was standing there now, his bike at his feet, his red cap pulled back on his head.
"Lena!" he called.
She lifted her hand in greeting.
"Catch this!" With one quick motion he took off the cap and spun it into the air.
It soared in a pure arc over the chalked sidewalk and curved toward Lena.
She reached out and caught it.
"It's yours!" Stewart called.
Lena put the hat on her head. It was a perfect fit.
CHAPTER 2The Gilly Sisters
"Do you think they're alive?" asked Nancy. She and Lena were sitting in the dark on the cold painted floor of Lena's room, staring at the lighted window across the yard.
Two bent, shadowy figures moved silently around a table in the room across the yard.
"They're ghosts."
"Really?" Nancy breathed.
"They never leave their house," whispered Lena. "But every night they walk back and forth, back and forth."
Next door to Lena lived two sisters whose name was Gilly. She had to pass their house every day on the way to and from school. It was a small dark red house with a screened in porch.
Walking by, Lena could never resist a quick glance at the house. Sometimes she saw pale faces behind a heavy screen. Sometimes she heard muttering voices, the squeak of a rocker, and the scrape of chair legs. Lena always forced herself to walk slowly past the Gilly sisters' house, but as soon as she reached the edge of their lawn, she broke into a run.
Sometimes when she was playing she was suddenly aware of the sisters. When she lifted Deedee up and twirled her around at the side of the house, or when she pretended to chase her through the yard, she somehow knew that the two sisters had put down their crocheting and swiveled around in their rocking chairs so that they faced the Rosens' yard.
"They're carrying something," said Nancy.
"Heads of dead people," Lena said.
Nancy shuddered deliciously.
"They have lived for hundreds of years, eating only dead blackbirds. Every night strange howling sounds come from inside their house—"
"Sssh!" said Nancy. "They're watching!"
One of the old women had come to the window. She stood for a moment looking out, a dim figure with rough unruly hair.
"She's looking at us!"
The old woman was staring directly at the girls. They dove to the floor.
"Do you think she saw?"
"She wants to put our heads on a platter," said Lena. The two girls laughed nervously.
"I hope she didn't see us watching," said Lena. "I have to go by her house every day."
"You said she doesn't leave her house."
"Well, she sits on her porch a lot. But she never walks out the door. Even though she's my next-door neighbor, I've never seen her face—or her sister's."
"You've lived here six years and you've never seen her face?"
"Not up close," said Lena. "Across the yard or from behind a screen. And that's as close as I want to get!"
The girls lifted their heads above the sill. The curtain was drawn now. The window across the driveway was closed and dark.
"I'm going over to the Gillys'," Lena's mother announced one day.
"Why?" Lena asked.
"Florence Gilly had the flu last week. The changing seasons, she told me." Her mother wrapped a meat loaf and a plate of cookies, and put on her brown dress with the yellow collar. "You're in charge, Lena," she called as she went out the door.
Lena read to Deedee, played spider with her, read some more. They went up the stairs to their uncle's apartment, but he wasn't home, so they came back down. Why couldn't her mother let the Gilly sisters take care of themselves? One hour and she still wasn't back. What was she doing over there? Why did it take so long? What did they need from her mother, anyway?
Lena got Deedee's bottle out of the refrigerator and propped it up in the baby's hands. The Gilly sisters were probably making their report. They were telling her mother how Lena watched them at night from her darkened room.
Or maybe they had given Lena's mother a poison powder. Or had stuck tiny needles in her arms that would put her to sleep. Tonight Lena would look across the yard and it would be her mother's head that lay on the platter....
"Daaat!" screamed Deedee. The bottle had fallen out of her small chubby hands. "Daaat, daat!"
"Oh, here, baby. Now hold on to it."
Lena heard footsteps in the hallway. Her mother came in holding an empty plate.
Lena scanned her mother's face anxiously—it was the same, no poisonous tint or deadly pallor. And her arms and legs were in all the right places.
"Would you believe they keep that house in perfect order?" Lena's mother asked. "Two old ladies and not a speck of dust."
"You were gone so long."
"They're just getting their strength back," her mother said. "There's nothing in their refrigerator. I'm sending you over tomorrow with a pot of soup."
No! thought Lena. Never! But she couldn't say that to her mother. Her mother would smile at her fears, give her a little encouraging pat on the back, and send her along. Not knowing that she was sending her oldest daughter into a deadly trap....
Lena walked slowly up the immaculate stairs holding a large pot of soup that was still warm.
From inside the darkened porch she could hear the creak of two rocking chairs. "Don't dawdle, child."
Lena pulled open the screen door. The odor of stale violets and shuttered rooms greeted her.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Moose Street by Anne Mazer. Copyright © 1992 Anne Mazer. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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