Book Reviews: Three books read in three weeks!!!

PRINCESS ACADEMY by Shannon Hale

Miri lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have quarried stone and lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king's priests have divined her small village the home of the future princess. In a year's time, the prince himself will come and choose his bride from among the girls of the village. The king's ministers set up an academy on the mountain, and every teenage girl must attend and learn how to become a princess.

Miri soon finds herself confronted with a harsh academy mistress, bitter competition among the girls, and her own conflicting desires to be chosen as princess or win the heart of her childhood best friend. But when bandits seek out the academy to kidnap the future princess, Miri must rally the girls together and use a power unique to the mountain dwellers to save herself and her classmates.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85990.Princess_Academy

What I learned from this book: be true to who we are.

THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4667024-the-help

I lived through this time period of civil rights unrest in the "60s", so it was interesting and eye opening to view life from the standpoint of those living in the South and how the "help" skirted around the issues and kept afloat, while making strides toward more equality. I learned that it is important to be brave as well as cautious when attempting to create change in human behavior, and that by calm and gentle means much good can be accomplished.

LIFE IS SO GOOD by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman

What makes a happy person, a happy life? In this remarkable book, George Dawson, a 101 -year-old man who learned to read when he was 98, reflects on thephilosophy he learned from his fathers belief that "life is so good" as he offeres valuable lessons in living and a fresh firsthand view of America during the twentieth cnetury.

Born in 1898 in marshall, Tecas, the grandson of slaves, George Don tells how his father, dispite hardships, always believed in seeing the richness in life and training his children to do the same. As a boy, George had to go to work to help support the family, and so he did not attend school or learn to read; yet he describes how he learned to rea the world and survive in it. "we make our won way," he says. "Trouble is out there, but a person can leave it alone and just do the right thing. Then, if trouble still finds y ou, you've done the best you can."

At ninety-eight, George decided to learn to read nad enrolled in a literacy program, becoming a celebrated student, "very morning I get up and I wonder what I might learn that day. You just never know."

In Life Is So Good, he shared wisdom on everything from parenting ("With children, you got to raise them. Some parents these days are growing children, not raising them") to attitude ("People worry too much. Life is good, just the way it is").

Richard Glaubman captures George Dawson's irresistible voice and view of the world, offering insights into humanity, history, and America eyewitness impressions of segregation, changes in human relations, the wars and the presidents, inventions such as the car and the airplane, and much, much more. And throughout his story, George Dawson inspires the reader with the message that sustained him happily for more than a century: "Life is so good. I do believe it's getting better." http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/933231.Life_Is_So_Good

What I learned about this book: keep looking ahead not backwards, be honest, generous, kind, thoughtful of people and animals, do an honest days work and then some, do the best you can, don't worry, don't complain or get angry, forgive, forget, choose to stay out of trouble, Take whatever you get and be happy. :)