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A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young

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zombie.nancy is a godess of fierce
07/10/09

In reply to A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young
to this day. I keep a healthy distance from bee hives - killers of precocious youths.
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The Queen of No
07/10/09

In reply to A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young
I remember announcing to my entire class: "IT'S LIKE IN 'MY GIRL'!" God, I was obnoxious. But yeah, this book was so sad. I miss reading this kind of stuff.
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lilbobbytables
07/10/09

In reply to A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young
Oh god. I remember this book. This, and Bridge to Terabithia, destroyed me as a child. This I read at home at least, with mama tables close by to monitor my sanity. Oh man.
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ShowOrTell
07/10/09

In reply to A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young
The stages of grief! My sixth-grade Reading teacher drilled us on these, mainly because all the books we read were kid-tragedy (Terabithia, Sounder, Where the Red Fern Grows). Good literature, according to her, meant lovable people and animals meeting untimely ends. I may be in the minority here - I haven't read A Taste of Blackberries - but I often find death in kids' books to be gratuitous and tacked-on, like, I'll differentiate MY young adult novel by skipping the happy ending and killing the brat.
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Luckwouldhaveit
07/10/09

In reply to A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young
I think of this book whenever I see a white crayon (the most useless crayon in the box, imho), because of the scene where Jamie's little sister says matter-of-factly that the white crayon is the color of the ambulance that they took him away in. I don't know why that made such an impression on me, but it did.
Then, I saw that movie My Girl (Macauley Culkin and that cute Anna girl), and Mac dies of a beesting, and I was outraged that they stole the whole story from Taste of Blackberries.
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slowpoke.r
07/10/09

In reply to A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young
Wow. I had completely and totally forgotten this entire book until reading this post. I guess I just blocked it out, or it was pushed down by Bridge to Terbithia, A Separate Peace, Where the Red Fern Grows, and numerous other childhood tearjerkers.

Or maybe I subconsciously knew as a child that I would never go outside again if I remembered it, since accidentally stepping into a wasp's nest was not an uncommon occurrence where I grew up.
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oudemia
07/10/09

In reply to A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young
I've basically never recovered from buying this from the Bookmobile.
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Spaceman Bill Leah
07/10/09

@oudemia: I was probably the only dork in my neighborhood who had the same reaction to the Bookmobile as I did the ice cream truck... ahhh childhood.
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save jinger
07/10/09

In reply to A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young
Between this and My Girl, bees were definitely the scariest animal of my childhood.
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hatepaperdoll
07/10/09

In reply to A Taste Of Blackberries: Only The Goofs Die Young
I wouldn't even let myself think about this book for a long time because of the whole writhing on the ground dying thing.

You know what Jamie probably shouldn't have done? He shouldn't have poked that beehive, thats what.
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Edited by hatepaperdoll at 07/10/09 3:48 PM hatepaperdoll was starred hatepaperdoll was unstarred

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