Fantastic journeys
Children's books often take readers to new and unfamiliar worlds. Can you identify the books (and their authors) from which the following descriptive quotes were taken?
1. Our new quarters we found very satisfactory. Inside the spacious shell, the snail's wide back was extremely comfortable to sit and lounge on - better than a sofa when you once got accustomed to the damp and clammy feeling of it.
2. It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel ... with lots of pegs for hats and coats....
3. He saw a long narrow room.... From the ceiling, huge lamps hung down.... At one of these ends [of the room] there was an enormous camera on wheels, and a whole army of Oompa-Loompas clustering around it, oiling its joints....
4. Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly.... She looked [up] at the sides and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and bookshelves: here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves ... it was labeled "ORANGE MARMALADE."
5. That very night in Max's room a forest grew and grew - and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks....
6. Peter took his turn.... "Monsoon season begins, lose one turn." Little raindrops began to fall in the living room. Then a roll of thunder shook the walls and scared the monkeys out of the kitchen. The rain began to fall in buckets as Judy took the dice.
7. When he opened the cupboard, the chief was still sitting on the shelf, looking about him in bewilderment, blinking as the light struck his eyes.
8. Old Mother West Wind had just come down from the Purple Hills and turned loose her children, the Merry Little Breezes, from the big bag in which she had been carrying them.
9. Lucy thought she had never been in a nicer place. It was a little, dry, clean cave of reddish stone with a carpet on the floor and two little chairs ... and a table and a dresser and a mantelpiece over the fire and above that a picture of an old Faun with a grey beard.
10. They left the great granite plain and flew over a garden even more beautiful than anything in a dream. In it were gathered many of the creatures like the one Mrs. Whatsit had become, some lying among the flowers, some swimming in a broad, crystal river that flowed through the garden....
11. At the first going Madame Mim immediately turned herself into a dragon. It was the accepted opening move and Merlyn ought to have replied by being a thunderstorm.... Instead, he caused a great deal of preliminary confusion by becoming a field mouse....
12. "Dictionopolis," read Milo slowly when he saw what his finger had chosen. "Oh, I might as well go there as anywhere." He walked across the room and dusted the car off carefully. Then, taking the map and rule book with him, he hopped in and, for lack of anything better to do, drove slowly up to the tollbooth.
13. He made a back-rest so that Harriet would be able to lean back and trail her fingers in the water if she wished. He also made a pillow by tying one of his clean handkerchiefs around some moss.... He wondered whether Harriet would notice that his paddle was really just an ice cream spoon.
ANSWERS
(1) 'The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle,' by Hugh Lofting (1922); (2) 'The Hobbit,' by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937); (3) 'Charlie and The Chocolate Factory,' by Roald Dahl (1964); (4) 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,' by Lewis Carroll (1885); (5) 'Where The Wild Things Are,' by Maurice Sendak (1963); (6) 'Jumanji,' by Chris Van Allsburg (1981); (7). 'The Indian in the Cupboard,' by Lynne Reid Banks (1980); (8) 'The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad,' by Thornton W. Burgess (1916); (9)'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' by C.S. Lewis (1950); (10) 'A Wrinkle in Time,' by Madeleine L'Engle (1962); (11) 'The Sword in the Stone,' by T.H. White (1938); (12) 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' by Norton Juster (1961); (13) 'Stuart Little,' by E.B. White (1945).
1. This tool operates on pins, tumblers, cams, and deadbolts.
2. The 'working' end of a kitchen machine, used with No. 4.
3. There's a 'whole' lot of them here, but they're really only a fraction - 25 percent, to be exact.
4. What do you suppose these items have to do with the name of a (non-Olympic) sport?
5. Rhymes with 'flower bed.' It's an appropriate item for April.
6. Swords may be mighty, but these hand-held objects are mightier still.
7. 'The rain in Spain goes mainly down the -----.'
8. Get back! If you see this, you're too close!
Answers to photo quiz: (1) key; (2) beaters from an electric mixer; (3) a stack of quarters; (4) nested mixing bowls; (5) shower head; (6) felt-tip marking pens, seen end-on; (7) a bathtub drain; (8) a burner on an electric stove.
(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor