Cobwebs (28 page)
In the absence of danger, there was no need to be tiny or invisible. But it was good to know what they could do if they needed to. And they would.
Does he know why he’s here?
She slipped into his arms; he fit.
Does he know why we are here?
She saw into his eyes: he knew.
LSO BY
K
AREN
R
OMANO
Y
OUNG
T
HE
B
EETLE AND
M
E
V
IDEO
O
UTSIDE
I
N
“Spiders crept into this story the way they creep into my writing room—softly, insistently, and unexpectedly. Suddenly they were there, creating magic around themselves. Beloved brick-and-brownstone Brooklyn became the background. When I went to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to take pictures, a real-life Dion in an Alta, Utah, T-shirt was there. My grandparents—a nurse and a doctor who really made house calls in New York City—provided more inspiration. And Nancy? Just as you’d expect, she came from the air. Her surroundings—from the Uprising Bakery in Park Slope to the kite shops in Chinatown—are there for the visiting. And be sure to look for me. I might be knitting, walking, rose-sniffing, roof-spying, or trying to find that curved street I think I saw once….”
Karen Romano Young
is the author of
THE BEETLE AND ME
. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, three children, two dogs, two cats, and one beta fish.
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In the folklore traditions of cultures all over the world, there are spider stories of heroic transformations, romance among outcasts, weaving derring-do, extraordinary sensory abilities, and intriguing traps.
Cobwebs
is the creative outcome of years of fascination with the lore, art, and science of spiders, as well as weaving, jump rope, and other stringy arts.
-K.R.Y.
Cobwebs
Copyright © 2004 by Karen Romano Young
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 HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-02989-8
The quote on this page
is from
The Lives of Spiders,
Dorothy Hinshaw Patent (New York: Holiday House, 1980). Used by permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Young, Karen Romano.
Cobwebs / by Karen Romano Young.
p. cm.
“Greenwillow Books.”
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Nancy enjoys the colorful ethnic mix of her heritage in several different Brooklyn households, not suspecting how very strange that heritage is.
ISBN-10: 0-06-441028-5 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-441028-1 (pbk.)
[1. Parent and child—Fiction. 2. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. 3. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 4. Spiders—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.Y8665Co 2004 [Fic]—dc21 2001045133
First paperback edition, 2005
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