Halloween in Paradise (Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Mysteries Book 6) by Kathi Daley

saying. To be honest, I have no idea where it came from.”
    “Let’s Google it,” Gracie suggested.
    “Good idea. What did we ever do before we had Google?”
    “We just didn’t know stuff.” Gracie giggled as Pumpkin jumped up onto her bed and began licking her face. Pumpkin and Gracie were getting along like two peas in a pod. Gracie loved animals and they loved her. Tj had really thought Crissy would abandon her when Pumpkin made herself at home on Gracie’s bed, but the cat seemed unwilling to give up her spot, so she was tolerating the dog.
    Tj typed the phrase into her laptop. “There are a bunch of answers. The most common is that when you know something well you know it like the back of your hand because you know your hand well.”
    “That’s dumb,” Gracie commented.
    “I have to agree. It’s not like I spend a lot of time looking at the back of my hand. Let’s move on to the next word: proximity . The dog was in the proximity of the doghouse.”
    “P-r-o-x-i-m-i-t-y,” Gracie said. “Proximity.”
    “Very good. You really do seem to know most of these words.”
    “Grandpa has been helping me, but the really hard words are on the last page.”
    Tj turned to the last page. “ Articulate ? Are you sure you have the second-grade list? These words seem really hard for second grade. Heck, they seem hard for any grade.”
    “They’re supposed to be hard,” Gracie insisted. “If they weren’t, everyone could spell them and it wouldn’t be any big deal to be the spelling champion.”
    “I guess that’s true.” Tj continued to study the list. There were several words she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to spell herself without the help of SpellCheck. There’d been a debate going on in the English department as to whether computers and smartphones weren’t actually making people dumber. With all the knowledge easily accessed on the Internet, Tj thought people were actually becoming smarter, but she could see that with each new generation skills such as spelling and handwriting might decline.
    “Most of the time the words on the very last page aren’t used, but you need to know them just in case,” Gracie informed her. “There’s a girl in my class who told me that her parents make her study for three hours every day. They go through the dictionary and pick out random words. Any words. If she can spell them all she gets some time to hang out with her friends on the weekend; if she misses them she has to study on the weekend.”
    Tj frowned. “That’s crazy. It’s just a spelling bee.”
    “Trisha’s parents are very ambitious and tenacious.”
    Tj laughed. “Tenacious? Where did you learn a word like that?”
    “That’s how Trisha describes her parents. Trisha knows how to spell tenacious. I don’t think I have a chance of winning, but I thought it would be fun to try.”
    “As long as you’re having fun I’m all for it, but I don’t want you to forget to be a kid.”
    “I won’t. Can we do some more words?”
    Tj looked out the window. It was still raining, so the girls wouldn’t be able to go out, making it a good day to study, but she had a long list of errands waiting for her to attend to.
    “I think we’ve studied enough for today,” Tj announced. “We can work on your words some more tomorrow.”
    “Okay.”
    “How about a snack?” Tj asked.
    “Can Pumpkin have a snack?”
    “Absolutely.”
    Tj settled Gracie in the kitchen and went to find Ashley. The fact that Trisha’s parents were so driven really bothered her. Sure, academic achievement was important. Learning to be a good student made all the difference in the options you had as you approached adulthood. But kids needed to be kids as well. They needed to play outdoors and watch cartoons and do kidlike things while they were young enough to appreciate their simplicity.
    She supposed Trisha’s parents had the right to raise their daughter however they saw fit. She might not agree with their