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!

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

I got this novel for Christmas. I had sort of heard about it before, but I really didn't know anything about it. But it was fantastic!

The story is told from Prince George's point of view. It starts out in his childhood, and we basically watch him grow up. George, like his mother, is blessed/cursed with the animal magic. He can talk to animals by learning their language. But animal magic is frowned on in their country, so George has to learn to keep it hidden at a very young age. Growing up with a secret like that is not easy, and it is one of the things that causes George to be insecure about himself. When George is 17, he is betrothed to Princess Beatrice, from the neighboring country. He has heard rumors about her, the strangest of which is that she keeps a hound with her at all times - they even sleep in the same bed. Many people of her kingdom think she is odd. George doesn't expect to love his queen, this marriage is simply for political reasons, but when he meets Beatrice, he realizes they may have more in common than either one expected.

I really loved this book. The tone was beautiful throughout the whole thing. Some ideas of the animal magic were a bit hard to take, but I guess that could be the case with any sort of magic. I also found two very obvious typos, which always bugs me. But, it was wonderfully written and I devoured all 410 pages in about 24 hours. It was completely clean and I highly recommend it.

Happy Reading!

Book Review: Theodore Boone, The Abduction

Grisham's back! This is his second Theo Boone book, and it was also very good. In this one, Theo's best friend, April, has been kidnapped and an escaped convict has shown up in town from California. Everyone is convinced the two things are connected. Theo can't stand by and not do anything for his friend, so he organizes some searches with his friends and puts up fliers with April's picture. But then a body is found in the river, the convict won't talk, and Theo starts to suspect someone else. With the help of his kind of crazy uncle Ike, and his friend Chase, Theo decides to save April himself.

This book was fast-paced and fun. Again, some minor story lines were thrown in for basically no good reason. And I found a few back-story holes between this book and his first Theo Boone book. But Grisham continues to capture the perfect writing style for his audience and characters. I recommend this book, especially if you enjoy the show Psych. :)

Happy Reading!

Book Review: Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer by John Grisham

This novel was very well written (of course, it's by John Grisham!). I was really impressed with Grisham's writing for young adults. He did a fantastic job of capturing the thoughts and feelings of a very smart 13-year-old boy.

Theo's parents are both lawyers and he spends his spare time at the courthouse. He can't quite decided what he wants to be when he grows up: a lawyer or a judge? When a big murder trial takes place, Theo wants to witness every moment of it. He has a reputation for being trustworthy and knowing the law inside and out, which leads to him being the sole confidant of a school-mate who's cousin is the only witness to the murder. Theo then has many problems on his plate, and if he doesn't figure out the right thing to do, a murderer could go free.

This novel is fast-paced and fun. Grisham does a great job of dumbing legal things down to make them understandable for his younger audience. I actually learned some legal things from this book. It was a clean read. The only issue I have with this book is that Grisham brought in a few very small side stories that he didn't wrap up very well. The ending also wasn't very satisfying. There's a second Theodore Boone book, but I don't think it is necessarily a sequel; I think it's just another stand-alone story with the same protagonist. So I probably won't get the complete wrap-up that I want. But I do highly recommend this YA novel.

Happy Reading and Merry Christmas!