Sophie’s World
Other books in the growing Faithgirlz!™ library
The Faithgirlz™ Bible
The Sophie Series
Sophie’s Secret (Book Two)
Sophie Under Pressure (Book Three)
Sophie Steps Up (Book Four)
Sophie’s First Dance (Book Five)
Sophie’s Stormy Summer (Book Six)
Sophie’s Friendship Fiasco (Book Seven)
Sophie and the New Girl (Book Eight)
Sophie Flakes Out (Book Nine)
Sophie Loves Jimmy (Book Ten)
Sophie’s Drama (Book Eleven)
Sophie Gets Real (Book Twelve)
Nonfiction
Body Talk
Beauty Lab
Everybody Tells Me to Be Myself but I Don’t Know Who I Am
Girl Politics
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Dedicated to the original Corn Flake Girls
of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania:
Brittany, Stephanie M., Lorraine, Jenny, Allison, Sarah, Julie, Stephanie R., Lauren, Lindsay, and Amanda.
ZONDERVAN
Sophie’s World
Copyright © 2004, 2009 by Nancy Rue
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.
ePub Edition September 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-56883-4
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan,
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rue, Nancy N.
Sophie’s world / by Nancy Rue.
p. cm.—(Faithgirlz)
Summary: A sixth-grade field trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, stimulates the overactive imagination of future film director Sophie LaCroix, leading her to use eighteenth-century tactics to save a friend from humiliation by the popular girls.
ISBN 978-0–310–70756–1 (softcover)
[1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Imagination—Fiction. 3. Christian life—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R88515So 2004
[Fic]—dc22
2004008751
All Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are taken from the
Holy Bible, New International Version
®
. NIV
®
. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
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Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. www.alivecommunucations.com
Zonderkidz is a trademark of Zondervan.
Interior art direction and design: Sarah Molegraaf
Cover illustrator: Steve James
Interior design and composition: Carlos Estrada and Sherri L. Hoffman
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal.
— 2 Corinthians 4:18
CONTENTS
S
ophie—hel-lo-o! I’m speaking to you!”
I know
, thought Sophie LaCroix,
but could you please stop? I can hardly think what to do next! Here I am in a strange country—I can’t seem to find my trunk, and —
“Sophie! Answer me!”
And could you please not call me “Sophie”? I’m Antoinette—from France.
“Are you all right?”
Sophie felt hands clamp onto her elf-like shoulders, and she looked up into the frowning face of Ms. Quelling, her sixth-grade social studies teacher. Sophie blinked her M&M-shaped eyes behind her glasses and sent the imaginary Antoinette scurrying back into her mind-world.
“Are you all right?” Ms. Quelling said again.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sophie said.
“Then why didn’t you answer me? I thought you were going into a coma, child.” Ms. Quelling gave a too-big sigh. “Why do I even plan field trips?”
Sophie wasn’t sure whether to answer that or not. She had only been in Ms. Quelling’s class a month. In fact, she’d only been in Great Marsh Elementary School for a month.
“So answer my question,” Ms. Quelling said. “Do you or don’t you have a buddy in your group?”
“No, ma’am,” Sophie said. She wasn’t quite sure who was even
in
her field trip group.
“You’re in the Patriots’ Group.” Ms. Quelling frowned over her clipboard, the skin between her eyebrows twisting into a backwards S. “Everybody in that group has a buddy except Maggie LaQuita—so I guess that’s a no-brainer. Maggie, Sophie is your buddy. LaQuita and LaCroix, you two can be the La-La’s.”
Ms. Quelling rocked her head back and forth, sending her thick bronze hair bouncing off the sides of her face. She looked
very
pleased with her funny self.
But the stocky, black-haired girl who stepped up to them didn’t seem to think it was the least bit hilarious. Sophie recognized Maggie from language arts class. She drilled her deep brown eyes into Ms. Quelling and then into Sophie.
Don’t look at
me, Sophie wanted to say out loud.
I don’t want to be La-La either. I am Antoinette!
Although
, Sophie thought,
this Maggie person could fit right in. She looks like she’s from a faraway kingdom, maybe Spain or some other romantic land. She can’t be “Maggie” though
, Sophie decided.
She had to be Magdalena
, a runaway princess.
Magdalena glanced over her shoulder as she knelt to retrieve the leather satchel, stuffed with her most precious possessions —
“So are you getting on the bus or what?”
Maggie’s voice dropped each word with a thud. She hiked her leather backpack over her shoulder and gave Sophie a push in the back that propelled tiny Sophie toward the steps.
“Sit here,” Maggie said.
She shoved Sophie into a seat three rows back from the driver and fell in beside her. In front of them, the other four Patriots fell into seats and stuffed their backpacks underneath. They twisted and turned to inspect the bus. Somebody’s mother stood in the aisle with Ms. Quelling and counted heads.
“I have my six Patriots!” she sang out, smiling at their teacher. “Two boys, four girls!”
“Eddie and Colton, settle down!” Ms. Quelling said to the boys seated between the two pairs of girls. Eddie burrowed his knuckles into Colton’s ball cap, and Colton grabbed the spike of sandy hair rising from Eddie’s forehead.
“Dude,” Maggie muttered. “I’m stuck in the loser group again.”
Sophie squinted at Maggie. “I thought we were the Patriots.”
“They just call us that so we won’t
know
we’re in the loser group.”
“Oh,” Sophie said.
She craned her neck to see over Colton and Eddie’s heads and get a look at the other two Patriots. The girl with butter-blonde hair squirmed around in her seat to gaze longingly toward the back of the bus.
SHE hates being in the loser group too
, Sophie thought. Actually she was pretty sure the girl, whose name she knew was B.J., hadn’t lost anything but her usual knot of friends. She and three other girls always walked together as if they were attached with superglue.
B.J.’s lower lip stuck out like the seat of a sofa. Next to her sat a girl with a bouncy black ponytail. Ponytail Girl tugged at the back of B.J.’s T-shirt that read
Great Marsh Elementary School —
the same maroon one all of them were wearing. Sophie had selected a long skirt with daisies on it to wear with hers, as well as her hooded sweatshirt. She always felt most like Antoinette when she was wearing a hood.
B.J. leaned farther into the aisle. The only thing holding her onto the seat was the grip Ponytail Girl had on her.