Remember Me: We Were Here

People want to be remembered. Nobody wants to be forgotten after they are gone. They want someone to recall that they were here.

Miguel, Rondell, and Mong all want to be remembered in the novel We Were Here by Matt De La Peña. The novel is told from the perspective of Miguel, a teenage boy who was sentenced to one year in a group home for committing a crime, that he won't tell the reader. Along with his sentence in the group home, Miguel was ordered to write down his thoughts in a journal for that year. One night, a fellow kid from the group home, Mong, invites Miguel to leave the home with him and run away from Mexico. Miguel thinks that it would be easier for his family if he just disappeared. So Miguel, Mong, and another group home boy, Rondell, run away without really a true plan to get to Mexico. Along the way they are faced with many challenges, but the worst one of all is figuring out where they belong in this world.

As a teenager this is a question you may ask yourself every single day.....WHERE DO I BELONG IN THIS WORLD? All three boys, Miguel, Mong, and Rondell, grew up on the rough sides of the track. And yes, all three boys made mistakes in their life that wound them up in this predicament. But none of this means that they should be forgotten in this world. They all want to be remembered whether its by their parents, or God, or just the world in general.

I would definitely recommend checking out the book We Were Here. The voice of Miguel is truly amazing and I think that any teen could relate to what he is saying. Even though you may have not grown up on the wrong side of the tracks or are running away from home, everybody feels alone in the world sometimes. This book will offer those readers a boost of hope.

The Power of Graceling

What if you had a certain power in your life that allowed you to have an upper hand over everybody? How would you use it? To help people or to hurt people?

In the book Graceling by Kristin Cashore, Katsa had one of these special powers called a grace. She was one of the most powerful fighters in all of the the seven kingdoms. She is even able to kill someone with her own two hands. Katsa works as an enforcer in her Uncle Randa's kingdom, making sure that people obey the rules or she will punish them. However, Katsa and a group of others form the Council that willingly help those people who are most in need. Prince Tealeaf, the father of the King of Leineid, is captured Katsa and group of members of the council go and rescue him. During the rescue Katsa encounters a fellow graced fighter, Po, who dramatically changes her life and makes her questions the things she once believed. When an important secret is revealed to Katsa that threatens the security of the Seven Kingdoms, she must carefully evaluate her life, her grace, and plan her next move.

Now I know what you are thinking, fantasy novels are for the weird kid in school. You know the one who dresses up on the weekend as some fantasy character and practices sword fighting. Ya well as stupid and naive as that may sound I actually used to stay as far away from fantasy as possible. But by reading Graceling, these assumptions have changed. I would recommend that if you tend to fear fantasy to check out Graceling. You won't be disappointed. It is also more of a mild fantasy that can get you hooked on the whole genre.

Now back to the book. What I really enjoyed about this book was the powerful female protagonist, Katsa. I usually associate fantasy as novels with a male protagonist. Katsa, however, was a strong, independent person, however she did have inner struggles. One of which was the fact that she did not believe in marriage, until one unexpected man enters her life.

There is a large struggle between good vs. evil in this book. It portrays how some with exceptional powers use those powers corruptly. However, it also shows the opposite of this; how people with exceptional powers use them in a way to create a good for others. The book examines that even though one has power, is it right to use that power unjustly? So like I stated in the opening questions of this blog entry, this book makes you think how would you act if you had the potential to create great changes using your power?

Even though this book is based off of a fantasy world, there are still themes and situations to which the reader can feel apart of and relate to (if this is what you are looking for in a novel). However, the simple fact of the novel Graceling, is that it will completely capture your attention and you will not want to put it down.