May Bird and the Ever After
Read May Bird and the Ever After Online
Authors: Jodi Lynn Anderson
Standing up straight again, May looked at the sky. There was the sun, up behind the filmy clouds that were darting away, She looked down at the water, then up again. Sut the sun's reflection was in a whole other place entirely. This light almost looked like it was
in
the water. May leaned a little bit farther, Squinting. The light moved, quick, like a fish.
May sucked in her breath. She knew she'd lost her balance the moment it happened. She swung her arms out at her sides to right herself, but it was too late. She toppled forward and hit the water with a splash.
âfrom May
Bird and the Ever After
Most people aren't very comfortable in the woods, but the woods of Briery Swamp fit May Bird like a fuzzy mitten. There, she is safe from school and the taunts and teases of kids who don't understand her. Hidden in the trees. May is a warrior princess, and her cat, Somber Kitty, is her brave guardian.
Then May falls into the lake.
When she crawls out. May finds her-self in a world that most certainly does not feel like a fuzzy mitten. In fact, it is a place few living people have ever seen. Here towns glow blue beneath dipping stars and the peopleâ
people?
âwalk, through walls. Here the
Book of the Dead
holds the answers to everything in the universe. And here. If May is discovered, the horrifyingly evil Bo Cleevil will turn her into nothing.
May Bird must get out.
Fast.
Within these pages, Jodi Iynn Anderson shares with us the beginning of May Bird's daring journey into the Ever After, a haunting place where true friendsâand one Jumble foeâawait May around every corner.
Jodi Lynn Anderson
grew up in New Jersey, where she spent a lot of time walking in the woods, pretending she was a queen. Today she lives in the haunted town of Roswell, Georgia, where she spends her time writing, and wishing she had a hairless cat.
Jacket design by Debra Sfetsios Jacket illustration copyright © 2005 by Leonid Gore
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Atheneum Books for Young Readers
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real
locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the
products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or
locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2005 by Jodi Lynn Anderson
Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Leonid Gore
Map on pp. x-xi by Peter Ferguson
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
eISBN: 978-1-4391-0754-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Anderson, Jodi Lynn.
May Bird and the Ever After / by Jodi Lynn Anderson.
p. cm.
Summary: Lonely and shy, ten-year-old May Ellen Bird has no idea what awaits
her when she falls into the lake and enters the Ever After, home of ghosts
and the Bogeyman.
ISBN-13: 978-0-689-86923-5
ISBN-10: 0-689-86923-1
[1. Fantasy.] 1. Title.
PZ7.A53675Mayb 2005
[Fic]âdc22Â Â Â 2004017829
For
Mom and Dad
CONTENTS