PW #124: MG Realistic Fiction: HOW TO BURY A BULL

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor Name: Lisa Lewis Tyre
Mentee Name: Alex Block
Title: HOW TO BURY A BULL
Category: Middle Grade
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count: 34,000

Pitch:

Six, maybe seven hours tops. That’s how long eleven-year-old Little Bit figures she has to get that dead bull gone before her daddy gets home. She’ll need every one of her rag-tag friends to make it happen, ‘cause if she doesn’t, someone will pay, most probably her little brother John Charles.

Excerpt:

Sometimes our dad’s sweet. Like when he snuck and set up the aluminum swimming pool in the back yard so that when we came home from school, we saw it all sparkly with cool water and little dolphins painted on the sides. Or when he took me (just ME!) to buy a new halter for my horse, Freckles, and to the movies! Or when he made a hot-air balloon out of red tissue paper for John Charles and none of us thought it would fly, but it kept going up and up, and we all hooted, and he and John Charles jumped in the pickup truck and chased it all the way to Pricer’s field. And they crawled through the barbed wire fence and watched it slowly come down and land gracefully in the pasture with Mr. Pricer’s cows all staring. And while they stood there, he said, “That was somethin’, son,” and rested his hand on John Charles’ shoulder, and you know this because John Charles told you it was the first time he ever called him son. Sometimes our dad is sweet like that. But then he’s not. Not at all.

So there’s no doubt that when he gets home, if that bull is lying there like a smelly, black hot air balloon that crashed to Earth, it’s going to be real bad.