Quincy Eldersveld

Mrs. Roskamp

LA, 8A

19 October 2016

Thematic Writing

This book is about a girl, Lea, who lives in St. Louis and her friend, Camila, came to visit her from Brazil. They signed up for a photography class. And so did Lea’s other friend, Abby, from her neighborhood. So they went to the first class and Abby started to get close and be really good friends with Camila. Lea and Camila went to a remodeling house and found a picture of a girl who was wearing the same necklace that Lea’s grandma owned. Which there was only one of that necklace, or so Lea thought. So Lea tried to solve the mystery and she was so focused on the mystery girl that she forgot to be a good host for her friend. In the end she found out that the mystery girl was a really good friends of her grandma, and that there was two of the necklaces. In this book I realized that friendships are more important than anything else.

The girls were not always acting like friends, they fought but not with words, with actions. The girls in this book, Lea and Abby, were best friends at the beginning. And Lea hoped that Abby would get along with Camila and that they could be friends too. But when Camila and Abby first met, Lea seemed to see that they were getting along almost too well. Which bothered her a lot. So she started to get mad at Abby. But what Lea did not realize was that Abby was being really nice to Camila because she was worried that Lea liked Camila more than she liked her. Abby was jealous of Lea;s friendship with Camila. And Camila was caught in the middle of the mess. In the end both girls could not stand each other and they finally talked over why they were mad and jealous. Once they talked that over they were all a really good group of friends. And I realized when I read that, that it is really easy to do sometimes. And that friendships are more important than trying to make people happy.

Another conflict was the photography class, Lea was told that she was not good enough. When the girls first signed up for the photography class they thought that they were good at it. They all loved it and they would learn more about taking pictures. On the first day they had to take pictures of whatever. Lea planned out her picture and took it very carefully. While in the meantime Camila and Abby took a bunch of fun and crazy pictures. Then the teacher pulled up the pictures to show the whole class. She got to Lea’s and she said that it was dull and needed some pop and some excitement. When she got to the other girls she talked about how much she loved their pictures. Lea was really jealous at that point. She was supposed to be the best photographer. And she was not ok with her friends being better. She was thinking too much about herself and not caring about others, and congratulating her friends for their photography skills. She was not being selfless. It would have been easier for her in the long run to just own up to her mistake and try harder the next day, because the girls have already gotten off to a bad start.

In this book I realized that friendships are more important than anything else. I really liked this book. It was a good mystery and not to long. It was a good quick read for a busy person. It had a lot of adventure and mystery. It was written by the perspective of Lea which was also easier to read for me. You learned things along the way about St. Louis and Brazil, but it was not written like a nonfiction book, I would not read it, because I really only read fiction and mystery. The one thing that I did not like about it was that the mysteries were easy to solve and you could figure out what would happen by reading a clue. So maybe they should have made the mysteries a little bit harder to find out! But overall I think that this is a well-written book.