the polar express book by chris van allsburg

For a moment Olive couldn’t believe it was the girl-not a girl, she was a middle-aged woman, but at Olive’s age they were all girls-and then she thought, Why not? Why wouldn’t it be Andrea? And then, minutes later, just as she had put another bite of scrambled egg onto her fork, Olive spotted her: Andrea L’Rieux. In a patch of sunlight on the table Olive’s rings twinkled on her hand, which sight-lit in such a way-gave her the faintest reverberation of surprise. For three weeks now she had been using a cane, and she made her way across the rocky pathway, not glancing up so as to be able to watch her footing, but she could feel the early-morning sun and sensed the beauty of the leaves that were turned already to a bright red at the tops of the trees. She nosed her car into a space and got out slowly she was eighty-two years old, and thought of herself as absolutely ancient. It was early-she drove only in the early hours now-and there were not many cars there, as she had expected there would not be. On a Tuesday morning in the middle of September, Olive Kitteridge drove carefully into the parking lot of the marina. 'The Poet' e mbodies what makes Strout's writing so sublimely wonderful: humor coexisting alongside heartbreak, the essential moments of grace shared between very different people.

In this short tale, Olive Kitteridge bumps into an old student of hers, Andrea, who has recently wrapped up her tenure as America's poet laureate-much to the surprise of her former math teacher. Oprah has just announced her latest Oprah's Book Club Pick is Elizabeth Strout's 'Olive, Again.' Here, Strout shares an exclusive excerpt called 'The Poet'-the first story the author wrote in the book.

The polar express book by chris van allsburg