Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    After Peaches
    After Peaches
    After Peaches
    Ebook99 pages56 minutes

    After Peaches

    By Michelle Mulder

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Ten-year-old Rosario Ramirez and her family are political refugees from Mexico, trying to make a new life in Canada. After being teased at school, Rosario vows not to speak English again until she can speak with an accent that's one hundred percent Canadian. Since she and her parents plan to spend the whole summer working on BC fruit farms, she will be surrounded by Spanish speakers again. But when her family's closest friend Jose gets terribly sick, Rosario's plans start to unravel. Neither Jose nor Rosario's parents speak English well enough to get him the help he needs. Like it or not, Rosario must face her fears about letting her voice be heard.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOrca Book Publishers
    Release dateOct 1, 2009
    ISBN9781554694327
    After Peaches
    Author

    Michelle Mulder

    Michelle Mulder is the founding author of and has written numerous titles in the Orca Footprints series including Pedal It!, Every Last Drop, Trash Talk and Home Sweet Neighborhood. They have also written several works of fiction including The Vegetable Museum and Not a Chance. Michelle lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

    Read more from Michelle Mulder

    Related to After Peaches

    Related ebooks

    Children's Social Themes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Rat Caught on Camera

      Jul 20, 2023

      Scrolling through Tinder, I groaned. Nope, nope and nope again! Then, just when I thought there wasn’t a single bloke on the site who I fancied, I stopped swiping. Hello, Joe! Gorgeous, with light brown hair, a buff bod and nice smile, I recognised h

      4 min read

    • Article

      Why I adopted 6 KIDS WITH DISABILITIES

      Jan 26, 2021

      From the outside, we don’t look like the typical family. For starters, I’m a single gay man who has adopted six children – Jack, 13, Ruby, 10, Lily, eight, Joseph, five, Noah, and Louis, two. And with no mum around, it’s not exactly a traditional set

      4 min read

    • Article

      Dream Girl

      Jan 1, 2020

      Dream Girl
      11 min read

    • Article

      Ruby Is Our HERO

      Jun 30, 2020

      Ruby Is Our HERO
      4 min read

    • Article

      Starting OVER

      May 24, 2023

      Starting OVER
      6 min read

    • Article

      Summer at BEACON BAY HEIGHTS

      Aug 16, 2023

      Summer at BEACON BAY HEIGHTS
      9 min read

    • Article

      Our Secret Recipe

      Oct 13, 2021

      Our Secret Recipe
      9 min read

    • Article

      Better

      Aug 12, 2019

      Better
      18 min read

    • Article

      The 100 Club

      Jan 31, 2021

      “Did you wash it?” That’s the first thing people usually ask Julia Mooney when they hear she wore the same dress for 100 days. The New Jersey schoolteacher and artist donned one grey, button-down frock day in, day out to make a wider point about cons

      6 min read

    • Article

      DEMENTIA Brought Us Closer

      Jul 1, 2021

      DEMENTIA Brought Us Closer
      3 min read

    • Article

      Meet the MODERN GRANNIES

      Oct 6, 2020

      Meet the MODERN GRANNIES
      4 min read

    • Article

      Finding “the One”

      Feb 24, 2021

      Finding “the One”
      8 min read

    • Article

      Dementia Brought Us Closer

      Jun 27, 2023

      Dementia Brought Us Closer
      3 min read

    • Article

      My Wild Life With PABLO ESCOBAR

      Oct 30, 2019

      My Wild Life With PABLO ESCOBAR
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Other Side Of THE FENCE

      Mar 1, 2023

      The Other Side Of THE FENCE
      6 min read

    • Article

      Daisy’s Day In The Sun

      Jul 12, 2022

      Daisy’s Day In The Sun
      8 min read

    • Article

      Shruti Swamy

      Jun 15, 2018

      Not the scent of the smoke, but the sight of it, not the sight itself, but the screen through which it altered the sunlight—she couldn’t articulate the change exactly, it’s just that the light seemed odd, like the acidic light of a nightmare. She had

      13 min read

    • Article

      Cricket Ceague

      Apr 1, 2019

      Penelope Berkeley, age 9 Mars Hill, NC Night had fallen, and Luna awoke from where she had been sleeping in a cornfield. She moved steadily through the stalks with barely a sound, keeping her eyes on the glittering glass rooftop of the greenhouse in

      7 min read

    • Article

      Lemon Trees

      Apr 10, 2024

      When her son walked into their townhouse, Zach’s darkb-rown curls shielded his eyes. It wasn’t the first time Stephanie thought the deflection looked intentional, but she hadn’t yet found evidence that her son’s aloofness hid anything significant. Sh

      16 min read

    • Article

      Now you sign

      Mar 7, 2024

      Now you sign
      3 min read

    • Article

      What the Tornado Gave Us

      Jul 1, 2022

      In part 1, Rosica tells the story of how she and her family moved from Mexico to North Carolina to join her father, who works as a roofer and has been sending home money. Adjusting to a new school where they didn’t know the language was easier on her

      9 min read

    • Article

      Into Our World

      Jan 21, 2019

      Into Our World
      7 min read

    • Article

      BABY Steps

      Apr 8, 2020

      BABY Steps
      9 min read

    • Article

      Koru

      Nov 10, 2022

      Koru
      9 min read

    • Article

      Rediscover THIS DAY

      Apr 1, 2021

      Rediscover THIS DAY
      4 min read

    • Article

      In the Beginning, In the End

      Sep 1, 2020

      In the Beginning, In the End
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for After Peaches

    4.5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      After Peaches - Michelle Mulder

      After Peaches

      MICHELLE MULDER

      ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

      Text copyright © 2009 Michelle Mulder

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Mulder, Michelle

      After peaches / written by Michelle Mulder.

      (Orca young readers)

      ISBN 978-1-55469-176-0

      I. Title.

      PS8626.U435A64 2009     jC813’.6     C2009-902807-7

      First published in the United States, 2009

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2009928213

      Summary: Rosario and her parents come to Canada as political refugees from Mexico. Rosario hates her heavily accented English, but she breaks the language barrier to save a migrant farm worker’s life.

      Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

      Typesetting by Bruce Collins

      Cover artwork by Simon Ng

      Author photo by Gastón Castaño

      ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

      PO BOX 5626, STN. B

      VICTORIA, BC CANADA

      V8R 6S4

      ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

      PO BOX 468

      CUSTER, WA USA

      98240-0468

      www.orcabook.com

      Printed and bound in Canada.

      Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper.

      12 11 10 09 • 4 3 2 1

      For those with the courage to speak

      Contents

      CHAPTER 1 The Plan

      CHAPTER 2 Build Your Own Adventure

      CHAPTER 3 What’s Normal?

      CHAPTER 4 Field Trip

      CHAPTER 5 Tulips

      CHAPTER 6 My Wonderful, Impossible Plan

      CHAPTER 7 Strawberries

      CHAPTER 8 Analía’s Letter

      CHAPTER 9 True or False?

      CHAPTER 10 Cherries

      CHAPTER 11 Speak

      CHAPTER 12 The Story

      CHAPTER 13 After Peaches

      Author’s Note

      Glossary

      CHAPTER 1

      The Plan

      Hey, stupid! The voice came from behind me.

      I didn’t need to turn around to know it was Robbie Zec, standing at the edge of the schoolyard with his buddies. They always yelled at me at the end of the day, when teachers couldn’t hear and probably didn’t care.

      I didn’t yell back anymore, just pulled myself taller and smiled at Julie as we crossed the street toward her place.

      Julie’s mum’s hired you to clean their house, eh? Robbie called. It’s about time you got a job. You can’t mooch off the government forever.

      I flinched, and Julie linked her arm with mine before I could bolt back to the school and knock him over. The astonished look on his face would have been worth getting in trouble for, I thought. He would never expect a girl to attack him. And I think Julie would have been secretly proud of me. She had been Robbie’s victim before I arrived, because she was way smarter than anyone else in grade four. Now he picked on me because he thought I was way dumber.

      Ignore them, Julie whispered, locking her elbow tighter with mine.

      I’m trying, I hissed back.

      Julie was the only kid I ever spoke English to. With all the other kids, I was silent, and everyone thought it was because I still spoke English like a two-year-old. That’s what Robbie said when I first came to school in January, and I yelled at him in Spanish then. I used every bad word I knew, and when I ran out, I shouted the Spanish names of vegetables because he wouldn’t know the difference anyway. I liked the scared look on his face, and the next day half of Georgison Elementary was whispering that I’d put a Mexican curse on Robbie’s family. They never found out the truth, and only Julie knew what I’d really said. After that day in February, I decided not to talk at school anymore.

      On my first day of silence, our teacher, Ms. Bower, made me stay after class to tell her why I’d stopped talking. I broke my vow just that once and told her the truth—that I didn’t want the other kids to make fun of my English. She said I shouldn’t let it bother me and that practicing was the only way to improve, but she wasn’t going to push me. I knew she was one of those teachers who wanted everyone to like her, and I think she was a little afraid of Robbie and his buddies too.

      The next day she told the class what a brave person I was to come to Canada and learn a new language, and that everyone should help me with my English. Robbie and his friends laughed at that idea, but she ignored them and went on with our math lesson. From then on, she only ever asked me questions I could answer with yes or no.

      Now it was early May, and only Julie knew that my English was getting better each day. By September, I was going to speak completely fluent Canadian English. Everyone would be amazed, and Robbie would be the one who was speechless.

      She’s so dumb, she probably can’t understand what we’re saying, Robbie shouted, practically in my ear. They were following close enough to step on our heels.

      Julie and I kept walking arm in arm, and she talked as though nothing unusual was happening. That was the very best thing about Julie: no matter how crazy she thought I was for not speaking English at school, she always stuck by me…even when people were yelling insults in our ears.

      Wait till I tell you about my plan for this summer, Julie said. I looked at her, surprised. Neither of us liked talking about the summer. Julie was going to be with her father in a big-city skyscraper for two months, and I’d be here, working at the farm with my parents. Neither of us would have any friends close by, and once Julie left for Vancouver, I probably wouldn’t speak to her until September. Even if we could have afforded the long-distance calls, I hated speaking English on the phone. It was harder to understand people if I couldn’t see their faces. I couldn’t tell if they were happy

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1