Sharon Creech

"My second life began when I was kidnapped by two complete strangers...."

Peoples are strange! The things they are doing and saying - sometimes they make no sense. Did their brains fall out of their heads? And why so much saying, so much talking all the time day and night, all those words spilling out of those mouths? Why so much? Why don't they be quiet?

It started out as an ordinary summer. But the minute thirteen-year-old Zinny covered the old, overgrown trail that ran through the woods behind her family's house, she realized that things were about to change.

Jack hates poetry. Only girls write it, and every time he tries to, his brain feels empty. But his teacher, Ms. Stretchberry, won't stop giving her class poetry assignments, and Jack can't avoid them. But then something amazing happens. The more he writes, the more he learns he does have something to say.