Sister of the Bride

by Beverly Cleary

Overview

Love and marriage but where's the fun?

A wedding in her own family! Barbara can hardly wait! As sister of the bride, Barbara is looking forward to a new dress, a lovely ceremony, and perhaps the start of a little romance with someone from the wedding party. Instead, she finds herself lost in the shuffle of anxious planning, pre-wedding bickering, and practical money concerns. Is this what marriage is all about? Then Barbara wants no part of it!While Barbara dreams of lacy wedding veils, her older sister Rosemary remains exasperatingly practical in this lifelike story of a family in the throes of wedding preparations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812426649
Publisher:	Harpercollins Childrens Books
Publication date:	09/01/1981
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	4.00(w) x 5.75(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Beverly Cleary is one of America's most beloved authors. As a child, she struggled with reading and writing. But by third grade, after spending much time in her public library in Portland, Oregon, she found her skills had greatly improved. Before long, her school librarian was saying that she should write children's books when she grew up.

Instead she became a librarian. When a young boy asked her, "Where are the books about kids like us?" she remembered her teacher's encouragement and was inspired to write the books she'd longed to read but couldn't find when she was younger. She based her funny stories on her own neighborhood experiences and the sort of children she knew. And so, the Klickitat Street gang was born!

Mrs. Cleary's books have earned her many prestigious awards, including the American Library Association's Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, presented to her in recognition of her lasting contribution to children's literature. Dear Mr. Henshaw won the Newbery Medal, and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Ramona and Her Father have been named Newbery Honor Books. Her characters, including Beezus and Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins, and Ralph, the motorcycle-riding mouse, have delighted children for generations.

Hometown:

Carmel, California

Date of Birth:

April 12, 1916

Place of Birth:

McMinnville, Oregon

Education:

B.A., University of California-Berkeley, 1938; B.A. in librarianship, University of Washington (Seattle), 1939

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

I guess this is just one of those days, thought Barbara MacLane on her way home from school one bright afternoon late in April. She was not alone. She was walking beside a boy, a very tall boy, but their thoughts were like those famous parallel lines that lie in the same plane but never meet.

Barbara was mulling over the events of the day. First there was that argument with her brother, because his cat had clawed one of the stuffed animals she kept on her bed. At breakfast her father had lectured her on doing better work in chemistry. Part of the afternoon had been spent in conference with her counselor who thought she should have her future planned as neatly as an English composition. He was an English teacher, who thought life should have a topic sentence. And now she was being walked home by Tootie Bodger.

Tootie, who was six feet four and played the trombone, had his problems. "Just because I'm tall everybody expects me to do things I don't want to do," he was saying as they walked up the hill. "Like dance with all the tall girls when I don't like to dance. And play basketball. All winter the whole school kept asking me why I didn't turn out for basketball, and when the season was over I thought they would forget it. But no such luck. Today the coach stopped me in the hall and said that next season he wanted to see me come out for practice. He said I was basketball material."

"Why don't you?" asked Barbara automatically. It seemed as if everybody in high school had to be some kind of material. That was what her counselor said she was. College material. He had sat there, tapping his nose with that yellow pencil and tellingher she was college material and asking what college she wanted to go to and what she wanted to major in when she got there.

I don't want to go out for basketball," answered Tootie. "I don't care what they do. Flunk me. Expel me. I am not going to play basketball."

"Why don't you want to?" Barbara was more interested in keeping the conversation alive than in learning the answer. It had been easy enough to tell her counselor where she wanted to go. To the University of California, where her mother and father had gone and where her sister Rosemary was now a freshman.

"Aw, I'm not any good. Id just fall all over my feet," said Tootie.

"Oh Tootie, you wouldn't either." She felt this was expected of her, but she went right on thinking her own thoughts. Her counselor hadn't thought much of her reason for wanting to go to the University, that was plain. And naturally she couldn't tell him that all she wanted to do, all she had ever wanted to do, was catch up with her sister Rosemary. So she had just said lamely that the one thing she was sure of was that she did not want to major in chemistry, and he had said she had better give some thought to her future. . . .

"Yes, I would," insisted Tootie. I always fall over my feet. Besides' I never can care that much about getting a ball through a hoop. It seems pretty stupid to me, chasing a ball around just to throw it through a hoop. Id rather practice my trombone."

They walked awhile in silence. It was too bad, Barbara decided, finally giving her attention to the boy beside her, that everyone expected Tootie to play basketball when he was such a good trombone player. The whole school respected him for his ability to play The Tiger Rag. You would think that would be enough. She wished she knew of something to say that would make him feel better, not only because she really wanted him to be happy, but because the walk home would be so much easier if he was more cheerful.

"It's getting so I get the feeling nobody likes me."

"Why, that just isn't true," protested Barbara, again because it was expected of her. "You know it isn't true. Everybody likes you. I like you." She saw at once that this was the wrong thing to say.

"Do you, Barbara?" Tootie asked eagerly. "Do you really like me?"

"Of course I do. You know that," Barbara answered impatiently, feeling that Tootie was insensitive to shades of meaning. There was no way to explain that she liked him to smile at in the hall or to talk to before class and that was all.

"No, you don't," contradicted Tootie, his morale sagging once more. "Not really."

"Yes, I do, Tootie." Barbara spoke without much conviction. This could go on all the rest of the afternoon. The whole trouble was that he liked her so much more than she liked him that she felt uncomfortable when she was with him.

"If you really liked me you'd go to the movies with me Saturday night." Tootie looked straight ahead, waiting for her answer.

"I'm sorry," said Barbara. "I would like to, Tootie, really I would, but Mom said something about Rosemary's coming home Saturday, and she said she wasgoing to ask Aunt Josie and Gramma over. You know how it is. Family dinner and all." They turned up Barbara's street, which was damp and woodsy and smelled of bay leaves.

"Rosemary only goes to the University over across the bay," Tootie pointed out. "She comes home all the time. It isn't as though she goes to Vassar or someplace a long way off." His voice was reproachful as he ducked to avoid a bay tree that leaned across the sidewalk.

Tootie was quite right.

Sister of the Bride. Copyright © by Beverly Cleary. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.