Stella by Starlight (30 page)

Roosters never look beyond the fence. I doubt if they ever think about flying.

But I do.

Union Mills, North Carolina. Yes, this is for you. Thank you for the stories on the porches late on summer nights. Thank you for the lightning bugs and the sweet tea. Thank you for the memories you didn't even know you were creating.

Thank you, Lord, for the release from the black hole of “wordlessness” I found myself in a couple of years ago. I will never again smirk about the pain of not being able to find the right words. Sometimes they hide in deep, dark places. Thank you for the light.

Thank you to my editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy, for giving me the tools to work through the pain, for understanding and space and time, which in the world of publishing is a supreme and precious gift.

Thank you to my friend and agent Janell Walden Agyeman, for her strength and encouragement and complete belief in the power of the spirit, and the wisdom of the ages, and for her acknowledgment of the ancestors to hold us up and lead us onto our designated path of light.

Thank you to the National Association of Black Storytellers, who inspire me each year, and who taught me the nuances and subtlety of storytelling, the secret voice of the drummer, and how to weave our history into story, to weave culture into fiction.

Thank you to my parents for their continued complete belief in me, (Mom, your story is coming next—look out!), and to my husband and children and grandchildren for their love and support.

ALSO BY SHARON M. DRAPER

Copper Sun

Double Dutch

Out of My Mind

Panic

Romiette & Julio

The Jericho Trilogy:

The Battle of Jericho

November Blues

Just Another Hero

The Hazelwood High Trilogy:

Tears of a Tiger

Forged by Fire

Darkness Before Dawn

Clubhouse Mysteries

The Buried Bones Mystery

Lost in the Tunnel of Time

Shadows of Caesar's Creek

The Space Mission Adventure

The Backyard Animal Show

Stars and Sparks on Stage

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 places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2015 by Sharon M. Draper

Jacket design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

Jacket illustration copyright © 2015 by Sarah Jane Coleman

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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OOKS FOR
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EADERS
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Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover and Irene Metaxatos

The text for this book is set in Scala OT.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Draper, Sharon M. (Sharon Mills)

Stella by starlight / Sharon Draper. — First edition.

pages cm

Summary: When a burning cross set by the Klan causes panic and fear in 1932 Bumblebee, North Carolina, fifth-grader Stella must face prejudice and find the strength to demand change in her segregated town.

ISBN 978-1-4424-9497-8 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4424-9499-2 (eBook)

[1. Prejudices—Fiction. 2. Segregation—Fiction. 3. Civil rights—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction. 5. Ku Klux Klan (1915-   )—Fiction. 6. North Carolina—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.D78325Su 2015

[Fic]—dc23

2014038728