Eggs
Jerry Spinelli
 On April 29, Carolyn Sue Limpert slips on a wet floor without a wet floor sign and falls down the stairs, resulting in her death. The Limpert family, consisting of Margaret, David's grandmother, David, Carolyn's son, and Carolyn's husband, move from Minnesota to Perkiomen Township, Pennsylvania. David becomes quiet and sensitive about his mother's death. His father, a sales manager, only comes home on the weekends, usually ending up with only David and his grandmother, whom he disrespects and ignores completely. In the beginning of the book, David's grandmother is taking him to the Easter Egg hunt, much to his disappointment. While hunting for eggs, he finds a beautiful girl resting underneath the leaves by some trees. When David asks if she's dead, she makes no response. He starts to talk to her about himself. He leaves, thinking that it's a dead body he's seen, and waits for a newspaper to come to express the news. It turns out that the girl he mistook for dead is Primrose, a ruthless thirteen year old who defies all rules. In a short time, the two, a thirteen year old with no father but a fortune-telling mother, and a nine-year-old with no mother, become great friends. Primrose lives in a 1977 van instead of a home, despite her mother's wishes for her to sleep with her. The duo commonly fight and get into loud arguments, but one day, when David makes a verbal slip about Primrose's unknown father being a homeless man on the streets, she becomes angry, shoving the boy's face into the cushions and nearly suffocating him. Refrigerator John, a man Primrose's size with a bad leg and a friend of the two is very kind to them and lets them sleep at his place. On the night of the Mid Summer Night's Scream, Primrose, disguised as David's mother and David go to the event, only to end in a quarrel in which David reveals Primrose's disguise, and his feelings of sadness and anger at his mother's loss. Infuriated, he runs, and ends up sleeping at Refrigerator John's home, much to his grandmother's worry. Time passes, and the two quickly reunite. Primrose sets off on a journey with David, who seemed to have no choice when she said she would go to Philadelphia. Later, she admits that she wants to see the Waving Man, a man who had been seen on TV, and known for waving at people as they passed. She also confessed that she wanted to ask why he waves. Much to David's shock, the two spend the night alone and away from home, since they couldn't make it back in time. David finds a comic book, Veronica, and reads to Primrose until she goes to sleep. In the morning, they are soon found by a police officer who had been looking for them throughout the night, but not before David sees the sunrise for the first time since his mother's death. The book ends with David planning his 10th birthday party. He leaves to go to Primrose, and helps her shove her beanbag back into her home. She wants to move back in with her mother, who had been the first to see her back in town when she came out of the police cruiser. David asks Primrose if they are going to try to go back to Philadelphia. Primrose says no because she knows why the Waving man waves. When asked by David why he waves, she says "because they wave back".