to write a citation (recommendation) praising a work
As we learned in Collection 2, book blurbs often include praise for the book from favourable reviews or from other authors. These citations – or recommendations – endorse the work and encourage a potential reader to buy the book. A citation or recommendation is a statement about the qualities or merits of a writer’s work.
This piece of fl ash fi ction by Elaine Wilbur won the popular ‘Page From My Life’ writing competition on RTÉ Radio 1. Read it or listen to Elaine read it and then answer the questions that follow.
‘Citation’ can also mean a quotation from or reference to a book, paper, or author, especially in a scholarly work
‘Page from My Life’ BY ELAINE WILBUR
We climbed to the top of the high wall around Kelly’s fi eld. Come on, she says. Just stand up.
It’ll be faster. Kelly’s fi eld has the biggest hay jump. We heard that you could jump from the railway bridge. She wants to go and I want to be her. I watch her nutty legs stretch in front of each other. Her socks inside her corked German sandals. That smile she fl icks backwards is warm and taunting, the same smile she has when she loans me another ten pence for Chickatees or Bubble Rubble. I want to get up out of my nine years of milky ordinariness. To shrug off early bedtimes and my Enid Blyton collection. To be white sliced pan for a day; normal for everyone else except me. Be brave I say to myself but my body refuses. My raspberry ripple knees grip both sides of the concrete blocks so tightly I feel printed with gravelly ridges. Those indents are the branding of my weakness. I knew I would never stand next to her or walk along this imagined tightrope. I knew it in the same way I knew I hated the wet potatoes in my mother’s stew. I probably have to go back for dinner I say and drop my leg down into my shame searching for solid ground. I see her knowing smirk as she skims away from me. Her form briefl y covers the sun and I lower myself into her shadow before coming back to earth.
