Book Review: The Princess and the Snowbird by Mette Ivie Harrison

This is the third book in Mette's series. This one follows the story of the daughter of Richon and Chala as she follows in her father's footsteps to fight the magic-sucking forces in the world. Liva has a ton of magic - she can change into an form she wants, except a Snowbird, which is a little baffling to her. She meets Jens early on in the book and is surprised by his total lack of magic, but also his complete acceptance and love of all things magical. They stick together to fight against the Hunter, who wants to make all humans unmagical like himself.

I liked this book because Mette continued to have a wonderful tone, and the emotion she gets into her novels is pretty impressive. I think she rushed through some scenes that should have been drawn out a bit, but I highly recommend this (clean) novel.

Also, when I met her (!) she told me she has a fourth book for this series but it's only offered electronically. Hopefully I'll get a chance to read it...

Happy Reading!

One Day, I'll Tweet This

There was a writing symposium at UVU this past weekend. I was only able to go to some of the workshops on Thursday, but I loved every minute of it. I took one of my YA books, The Princess and the Hound, to get signed by the author, Mette Harrison. Since it was the actual book signing time, I only took that one instead of all three that I own by her. I went up to her after the Vampires are NOT Your Boyfriend panel, and with sweaty hands and a racing heart, I asked her to sign my book. She was very nice and wrote a cute little message. Day made.

But there's more! The next day, my beautiful roommate went to more When she went to get them signed Mette asked what name to put. My roommate explained that she was actually getting them signed for her roommate who had asked Mette to sign a book the day before. Well then Mette smiled and said something along the lines of, "Oh, I remember her. I Tweeted about her yesterday." So my fantastic roommate came home with my two other books signed, and found Mette's Tweet. She showed me when I got home and I was on cloud nine! I WAS TWEETED ABOUT BY AN AUTHOR! So incredibly cool. And, look! I have the proof! I am the woman mentioned in the first full Tweet on her feed.

Yeah, that's what's up. :D

Movie Sort-of Review: Breaking Dawn Part One

(I'm writing this as if my audience has already seen the movie.)

I finally went to see the new Twilight movie last night at the dollar theater. It was kind of what I expected: more mediocre acting, some good special effects wolf-wise, and a lot teenage angst. I feel like they could have easily made the last book into just one movie; splitting it into two just drug out the movie to the point where it felt tedious. I thought the flash-backs, dreams, and weird internal-transitioning parts were over-the-top and didn't fit too well. Bella's first dream, about the wedding, seemed a little too gory to me, especially for the target teenage girl audience.

The wolf story line was very well done. They way they do the wolves is spectacular, but this time around, I thought their canine teeth were too saber-tooth tiger - way too long for the size of their mouths. I love the fight scenes with the wolves. Even in human form, I thought they were fantastic. Leah did a great job, and Seth was darling. Jacob, of course, is always great. The log/coast bit was good but I think they tried to make Jacob's defying Sam part too dramatic and it ended up being confusing.

Bella spent too much time in too little clothing. Her wedding dress was not flattering. I was impressed with the way they made her look so sickly; she looked skeletal, and it was amazing. Her body popping back to health at the end was a little strange though. Poor Jasper only got one measly line, and Emmett looked...off. Not sure how, but he looked different. I always love Charlie and I especially liked the bit in the Cullen's house when he noticed the graduation caps. That was a clever touch. Alice's hair (especially at the wedding) was my favorite. It was so classy.

Overall, it was okay. The movies are slowly improving, and I do like the special effects. I think that for this movie, it'd be better to read the book or the wolf story line, imprinting, and the maid's freak-out may be confusing. There was (finally) a fight scene in this movie, and that was exciting, even if it was brief. Hopefully the next movie will be the best.

Successful Stories

Lately I've been thinking a lot about creating success for yourself. One of my favorite Sarah Dessen quotes says, "Sometimes you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push, so to speak. You know?" I have that quote on my wall above my bed. In my Publishing Children's Literature class we've had a bunch of fantastic speakers come. This week we had five authors, all of which I love. The biggest thing I got from them was to persevere and stick with it. Even if books get rejected, keep trying. Be proud of finishing a novel even if it doesn't get published. Basically, they've been really motivating. And then this article showed up in our school paper and I was like, "Yay you guys!" They had a dream and they made it happen. So I'm going to start giving my fate a push and making things happen. There's a publishing fair on campus this week, wish me luck!

"Don't be scared to have a dream and go after it. The world has enough cowards."

Service

Provo beats every other city in the country when it comes to service by 4.5%. That right there is a fact. I helped support this awesome statistic yesterday when I went to Provo's annual community service day in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. It was a huge event with hundreds of people. You could volunteer for whatever you wanted, and the choices were endless. You could participate in a blood drive, help clean and shelve library books, organize costumes at a local theater, dance with the elderly, write letters to soldiers, clean an animal shelter, build with Habitat for Humanity...the list goes on and on. Me and my group of friends decided to build and paint toys for underprivileged children.

There were lots of different choices. I built a steam roller, and so did most of my friends. K built a castle and it had a little working drawbridge!

It was a lot of fun! Plus it was service :)

Book Review: The Princess and The Bear by Mette Ivie Harrison

This is the sequel to The Princess and The Hound. It was fantastic. The story of the animal magic continues with the hound and the bear from the first book. They are sent - now in human form - back in time to fight the unmagic. The unmagic is basically death and destruction. It sucks out not only the magic, but the life of any living thing that it touches. The hound takes on the name Chala and the bear becomes King Richon again - a life he has not enjoyed for 200 years. Together they travel through his kingdom, seeing all the sorrow his lack of appropriate ruling has brought. And King Richon resolves to be a better person - a king his people can look up to.

Once again, Harrison succeeded in writing a beautiful novel. The magic is still a bit tricky to understand and sometimes I felt like she rushed through parts of the story and it made the scene hard to take in. It was 100% clean. I really enjoyed this novel and I highly recommend it.

Make Life Better

I so wish I could take credit for all of these wonderful things, but I can't. But I can share them with you. Please read this inspiring article. Every single one of these ideas applied to me in some way. I am going to try to work on all of them. I'll even post updates on how I do. See? Now I'm motivated. :)

READ: 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself or 30 Things to Make Your Life Better.

Good Luck!