What Christmas Really Means

We all know that when the holidays come, it's always about buying and receiving gifts. But we don't usually think of the meaningful reason behind the idea of giving presents. It's the good feeling that you get when the other person really likes the gift that you get is the most important emotion. I remember when I was in elementary school, my class would always make handmade ornaments for either our families or our Christmas tree. I remember I made a snowman ornament with my face in the middle of the snowman and when I gave the ornament to my parent's, they already liked my gift and it shows a lot of meaning to me because to this day, they still have that ornament and that makes me happy that they still remember. It also gave me confidence that I can trust my parents because they still care about me and how I feel.

What Quote Represents Me?

There are some times that we go on Pinterest and look at quotes, but there are so many of them that you can't narrow down to just one quote. Some people want to find quotes that represent their personality. But I think this quote by E.E Cummings would represent what I had feared most: growing up. E.E Cummings once said: "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." I think what this quote means is that we sometimes have fear of growing up and we don't want anything to change. But sometimes, we need to grow to find who we really are. I think this quote represents me because I usually don't like changes because of past experiences that I've had growing up, but I now realize, that sometimes we need to grow up and experience these changes so we can become stronger and better people.

Theme of Courage for Beginners

In my new book Courage for Beginners by Karen Harrington, the story is set in Texas where a girl wishes that she was a character in a book. Mysti and her best friend Anibal are best friends, until he ditches her to become a hipster so he can be with his crush Sandy Showalter. I think automatically that the theme of this book is that you don't have to change who you are to please other people. In the book, Anibal says to Mysti, ""Are you going by Missed-teeth this year?" Missed-teeth? Oh. Missed. Teeth. There is a roar of laughter from the other two boys. Of course, they have nice, straight teeth."" This quote proves that Anibal would do anything to get his crush's attention, even though it means that he is hurting his best friend. When you change, who you are, your real friends would fade away and you would be stuck with people who you think that they are your friends. I think this theme is very important to add in our lives because most of us want to change who we are just so we can either be popular, or that other people can see us differently. But the truth is, you are loosing part of who are and replacing that with something you're not. We need to accept ourselves in our own way instead of changing for others.

Special Moment in A Little Something Different

As I was reading my new book, A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall, I noticed that there was a moment in my book that would be very significant as I read more of this book. In this book, Lea's friend is gay. And he hoped that Lea's love interest Gabe was either homosexual (liking both genders in a romantic way) or gay as well. But as revealed by Lea, Gabe is not homosexual. Lea and Gabe both like each other but they think that the other person doesn't like them. When Gabe went to the library in their college, he found Lea and her friend Danny hugging. So now Gabe thinks that Lea and Danny are together, but in reality they are close as friends. This would show that with this confusion, there will be more conflict near the middle of the book. I thought of this as an Aha! moment because this might reveal that Gabe might be jealous of Danny, but in reality, Lea and Gabe are only friends. And this would cause confusion in the conflict of A Little Something Different.