Quotes from Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Wally faced the front of the room again. When he and Caroline were not speaking, she drove him nuts. When he and Caroline were speaking, she drove him nuts. It was hopeless. He couldn't escape. His destiny was to be driven absolutely crazy by Caroline Malloy.

I just know she's going to go there today and sneak down in that cellar." "So?" said Jake. "Then what?" asked Josh. So? Then what? After all his brilliant work luring Caroline to the cellar, his brothers didn't know what to do? "What do you mean, then what?" squawked Wally. And he suddenly realized he didn't know either. He put his imagination on fast-forward.

How's my wittle Shiloh-biloh-wiloh?

I'll remember you acting crazy!

Do not panic! Lord Thistlebottom

Be right back," Jake told her. Wally said nothing. He was thinking how their last words to her would be "Be right back," and twenty years later they'd get out of prison.

Why the Hatfords? Who else was as much fun to tease, trick, fool, annoy, harass, and just plain drive to distraction?

Peter was leaning his elbows on the end of the table, a piece of bread smeared with peanut butter in his hands, chewing wide eyed with his mouth open. Wally tried not to look. Whenever Wally was really hungry at school and didn't think he could hold out until noon, he thought about the way half-chewed bread and peanut butter looked in Peter's mouth, and he wasn't hungry anymore.

Will all this never end?" asked Mr. Hatford. "Why do I get the feeling that I don't even know half of all that's been going on around here?" "'Cause you don't, I guess," Wally mumbled.

She knew she was going to drop it. Was sure she was going to drop it, so to make sure she didn't, pretended she was carrying a little baby sister across a river filled with alligators. If she dropped her end of the crate, her sister, her dear little sister, her sick little sister, would fall into the water below and be eaten alive.

stares down at her spinach. "It looks like poop," she says.

Wally closed his eyes. He couldn't imaging dragging Eddie anywhere. A tiger, maybe, but not Eddie Malloy.