As White as Neapolitan Ice Cream

　　Outside the city lay fields where sheep strayed and frayed the grass. There were orchards, too, hung with the golden globes of oranges, the silver sheen of pomegranates, the happy bubble of purple grapes.

　　Monacello and Napolina danced in honey-golden sunshine, wearing smiles as white as Neapolitan ice cream, eating olives from the littlest trees. From so far away, the city, rising steeply out of the sea, was beautiful: you would have to have gone much closer to see the bits of darkness caught on all its sharp corners.

Monacello, The Little Monk, P56
written by Geraldine McCaughrean
illustrated by Jana Diemberger
ISBN 978-1-907912-03-0

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The Undercity

　　At the bottom of the well lay a maze of waterways spreading out like the roots of a tree, watering the roots of the city. At the bottom of the well lay something even more wonderful.

　　The Undercity!

　　Naples is an ancient city. The centuries have piled it up like the chapters in a book, one city on top of the one before. Underneath Naples-in-the-Sunshine lies Naples-in-the-Dark.

　　Here, once, Romans in togas and sandals cooked and worked, ate and slept, painted their walls with pictures, paves their floors with coloured stones, while the river flowed outside their windows and fruit trees grew in their sunny courtyards. Now the windows had no view but darkness; the courtyard had no sky but the floors and streets above them.

Monacello, The Little Monk, P32
written by Geraldine McCaughrean
illustrated by Jana Diemberger
ISBN 978-1-907912-03-0

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A Mountain of Cats

　　Naples had a lot of cats and Monacello liked every one of them. Sometimes he roamed the city alongside them, balancing along window sills and roof ridges, skittering over the bridges and through the empty market squares, gobbing up garbage and chasing cats.

　　He gave them names —— Wormy, Flarehouse, Hairdrop —— and the cats loved him for it. No one had given them anything as nice as names before.

　　Monacello slept under a mountain of cats.

Monacello, The Little Monk, P26
written by Geraldine McCaughrean
illustrated by Jana Diemberger
ISBN 978-1-907912-03-0

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