Great First Lines

With the summer reading program quickly approaching, I've been visiting elementary schools to talk about the program with students. One thing I do during these visits is have the students judge books by their covers and by their first lines. Some books get great reactions and others don't, and it's always interesting to see what the kids like and don't like.

I love judging books by the covers, and even more by their first lines, so much that I've also done two different displays of young adult books with great first lines in the past. Today, I'm sharing some of my favorite first lines from young adult books.

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."

--Feed by M.T. Anderson

"So in order to understand everything that happened, you have to start from the premise that high school sucks."
--Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

"I've confessed to everything and I'd like to be hanged. Now, if you please."
--Chime by Frannie Billingsley

"The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World."
--Going Bovine by Libba Bray

"The afternoon my parents died, I was out shoplifting with Irene Klauson."

--The Miseducation of Cameron Post by emily m. danforth

"I'm a sweating fat kid standing on the edge of the subway platform staring at the tracks."
--Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going

"One minute the teacher was talking about the Civil War. And the next minute he was gone."
--Gone by Michael Grant

"It is impossible to know who you really are until you spend time alone in a cemetery."
--Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

"The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath."
--An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

"I was buried alive."
--Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel

"A couple things that made that day stand out more than any other: it was my sixth birthday, and my mother was wielding a knife."
--Switched by Amanda Hocking

"The entire world had gone dark, and I had no idea why."

--Arise by Tara Hudson

"In order to tell you what really happened, what you don't know, what the journalists didn't report, I have to start at Mother's annual Christmas Eve party."

--The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely

"There's no such thing as a secret in this town."
--Golden by Jessi Kirby

"I wake up. Immediately, I have to figure out who I am."
--Every Day by David Levithan

"Maybe getting drunk and dressing up like a pirate for the masquerade was a bad idea."
--Timepiece by Myra McEntire

"This whole enormous deal wouldn't have happened, none of it, if Dad hadn't messed up his hip moving the manure spreader."

--Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

"It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since scientists perfected a cure."
--Delirium by Lauren Oliver

"Her email didn't move or disappear or do any of the creepy things I'd expect an email from a ghost to do."

--The Liar Society by Lisa and Laura Roecker

"Maggot said we should go to Times Square to watch the ball drop and pick some pockets, but we never got around to it."
--Can't Get There From Here by Todd Stasser

"Walking to school over the snow-muffled cobbles, Karou had no sinister premonitions about the day."
--Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

"I was seventeen years old when I saw my first dead body."

--Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

"On the day Liz Emerson tries to die, they had reviewed Newton's Laws of Motions in physics class. Then, after school, she put them into practice by running her Mercedes off the road."
--Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang

What are your favorite first lines from books? Let us know in the comments!