First Blog Entry

           Hello Everyone!, or the one or two people who actually will read this. My name is Macie Wheeler. I'm a junior at Carbondale Community High School. This year for my english class I have to blog throughout each week about the current book I am reading. As of now, I'm pretty excited for this assignment. I'm not the best at analyzing readings, or describing the facts and reasons to why others think the book was good or bad. However one thing I ususally have going for me is being able to develop my own opinions on the book, and being able to take a creative outlook on the meaning or events. I'm interested on what I will end up writing about each week and seeing if I will improve by the end of the quarter.
            The purpose of the blogs are to give an outlet to place our opinions of the book that we the class are assigned to read off of the Read For a Lifetime list. This gets us away from the usual analytical essays, and boring book reports most classes are assigned. Read For a Lifetime is a list of books given to students, as reading suggestions. This year I'm looking forward to getting to read more books on the list. The first book I chose is called Willow by Julia Hoban. The book is about a teenage girl named Willow who secretly cuts herself to deal with the pain of her parents death. She blames herself for them dying since she was the one driving when they died in a car crash. She also feels guilty that her brother had to take her in, and she feels as if she is a burden on his family. Willow then meets Guy, a boy who is just as complicated and sensitive as her. She continuley begins to discover it's hard to keep a secret that she has written all over her body. I chose this book because it's different than any other book I have ever read. I thought this book would give me a different persepective on many different things such as greif, guilt, self mutilation, and even love.
             Prompts I plan on doing this quarter, include a wide aray of things. I would like to do some personal connections to Willow. I want to be able to describe the different events she went through, and the way she handled what had happened to her. I want to talk to other people and find out how they handled greif, to see if it is at all relatable to Willow. I want to write about her relationship with Guy, and if it is or not relatable to most high school relationships. Another prompt I plan on doing, is to write about the possibility of a person having such an affect on another that it could literally alter some ones life. I'm sure I will develop more as I go along.

(Book Cover)