WORD LISTS

"The Midnight Children" by Dan Gemeinhart, Chapters 18–25

Sat Mar 16 16:52:33 EDT 2024
By Vocabulary.com (NY)Visual Thesaurus Moderator
Twelve-year-old Ravani Foster is the only person in Slaughterville who sees seven children move into the house across the street and, wanting their friendship, he vows to protect their secret.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–6, Chapters 7–17, Chapters 18–25, Chapters 26–35, Chapters 36–59
persistent
No matter who Ravani was talking to, or which porch he was badly missing with a newspaper, one word echoed like the persistent caw of a crow in his mind: Ragabonds. Ragabonds. Ragabonds.
flamboyant
Fred Frotham had performed a flamboyant character on his café's patio, Ravani dimly remembered; a burly Russian bear trainer, he thought he recalled.
lukewarm
Virginia’s face spread in a smile that on anyone else could have been called lukewarm, but on her counted as beaming.
bile
"Can we go?” Ravani asked, still fighting the rising bile from his belly.
befuddled
"Sell sauce?” Mr. Skinister repeated, befuddled. "There isn’t even any meat in it.”
daub
Colt pulled a bandanna out of his back pocket and daubed it along Ravani’s forehead.
exasperated
"Well...I mean...I don’t...well, Donnie always wins, anyway,” Ravani sputtered. He blew out an exasperated breath.
incredulity
"Take me, for example. I have always wanted to say the words, Lay it on me, old man. And if the chance ever presents itself, you can be darn sure I ain’t gonna let it pass me by.”
"'Lay it on me, old man’?” Virginia said with bored incredulity.
skedaddle
"Let’s skedaddle. You two got some work to do. And my afternoon nap ain’t gonna take itself.”
trough
"Last year a team rowed the whole way in an old pig trough.”
shroud
He stretched his candle arm out toward the shrouded shapes.
plush
It was lined with plush red velvet.
streamline
"It’s, like, streamlined,” Ravani said, grinning back at her. "It’s made for the water!”
heft
They hefted the casket up by its handles and lugged it over to the brightest patch of basement dirt, in the full sunlight of the cellar door.
tarnish
Virginia pulled a screwdriver out of her back pocket and got to work unscrewing the tarnished hinges so they could yank the lid off.
bow
“The foot end can be the front,” she said.
“You mean the bow?”
“No. I mean the front. I’m not a sailor, Rav.”
hearse
“You’re putting the cart before the horse,” she said. “Or, before the hearse, I guess.”
assume
“I’ve...never been in a coffin before.”
“I’d assumed that, comrade.”
gingerly
She sat up gingerly and held on to the coffin's sides, then scooted forward a bit. “Now get in behind me. Don’t tip us.”
casket
He got one foot in, then stood there halfway into the casket, trying to get up the nerve to make the leap. The coffin started to float away.
myriad
She blinked, eyes wide, looking around at the myriad birdhouses of Haven Hollow.
unscathed
He was five feet past Donnie and tantalizingly close to getting past him unscathed.
pucker
Virginia shook her head thoughtfully, mouth puckered.
garish
She’d painted the words in big curly white letters and outlined them in black so they popped out boldly against the garish red coffin.
dollop
He kept his voice deep and unbroken, but at a shout he could add some scratchy gravel to it and a little sharp rasp. He put a dollop of southern flavor on it, too.
tousle
"Make sure they don’t,” Colt said, tousling Ravani’s hair.
pensive
Virginia nodded, brow furrowed pensively.
ruse
Ravani stiffened, thinking she’d just given the whole ruse away.
sliver
The door opened just wide and long enough, though, to give a quick glimpse of a sliver of the kitchen, including a woman standing at the sink with her back to them.
gripe
"I wish we had known you were coming,” Beth griped theatrically through the door as Ravani made his exit.
scuttle
He scuttled, bent over and wheezing, around the corner of the Deerings’ house and up to the bush beneath the bathroom window.
linoleum
He launched himself over the sill and through the window, bouncing off the toilet and sprawling with a wind-sucking thud onto the linoleum floor.
recede
Footsteps, receding away down the steps.
flurry
The kitchen was a flurry of voices, elbows, and jostling bodies as the Deerings bustled, each doing their part.
amble
Benjamin and Winnie ambled away toward the front porch, Annabel and Beth walked out to the dining room, and then it was just Ravani and Virginia and Colt standing in the kitchen alone.
flimsy
He looked down at the shabby keyboard—with its crumpled corners, and smeared crayon, and flimsy tape holding it all together—so he didn’t have to look in her eyes.
sonorous
And he heard it. A note, faint and distant. Then another. The warm, sonorous voice of a piano.
skepticism
“Yeah. It’s part of the magic, Rav. Every Ragabond, when they join, gets a Special. A power, sort of.”
“You mean...like a superpower?” Ravani tried and failed to keep the skepticism out of his voice.
forge
"He can fake signatures, forge forms, counterfeit documents. He makes us school records, birth certificates, whatever. The world runs on paperwork, Rav.”
intriguing
One had been a travel agent’s office. Also intriguing. Into his notebook it went.

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