OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS — Review

Thought for the Day:

“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.”
~ Paulo Coelho ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

It’s important to know what drives our characters. HERE Barbara O’Neal writing for Writer Unboxed has a terrific post on The Wound and the Contradiction.

Writers Helping Writers has a great post HERE by September C. Fawkes on Mastering the Turning Points in Relationship Plots, a good thing to master.

Revision is hard work, but it’s necessary. HERE is a good post from the Institute for Writers worth reading: Revision: Clearing the Clutter.

It’s Oscar day. My daughter, granddaughter, and I are already busy trying to figure out what holds some of those dresses up and how can some people walk in those shoes and things like that. We have seen a lot of the nominated films including a long afternoon at the theatre yesterday watching the live and animated short films. There were a couple of stunners and a couple we aren’t sure we understood, but they were all interesting. I don’t have a favorite in the animated section, but Red White and Blue in the live category was absolutely amazing. I hope it wins. My favorite film this year of American Fiction. I think it will be unfortunately overlooked. I suspect Oppenheimer will win, but it’s fourth on my personal list. I think Cillian Murphy will win for best actor, but I think Paul Giammatti deserves it, and I think Lili Gladstone will win for best actress. She did a great job, and I have no problem with it, but Emma Stone’s role in Poor Things was the most challenging role of the year, and she was amazing. That’s as far as I’ll go with predictions. It should be a fun evening.

I found OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS by Sara Farizan on the review list for the Tulsa Book Review quite a while ago, but somehow I never posted my review here. I don’t know how that happened, but, as I too often say, it’s never too late to review a good book. And this is a good book. Here is the review I wrote for TBR.

When your best friend is a soccer star, your sister is great at everything, and you have trouble finding your thing, life is difficult. Lila tried lots of things — chess, robotics, debate, drama, but none were right for her. She joined band and seemed to be getting along okay when Mr. Hernandez announced the music program would be cut. Lila decided to save the program. She went to the bank to get a loan, but instead, she found a key. Little did she know it could be the key to success. But the person who lost it would do anything to get it back. Lila discovered the key was magic, and she got a powerful friend who could help. Or could she?

Sara Farizan has written a fun contemporary fantasy that middle graders will love. The characters are well-rounded and believable. Lila’s family situations and school situations are all issues middle-graders will relate to and have to grapple with. The magic is just enough to create a little havoc and not too much to overwhelm this contemporary story. The writing is excellent and the dialogue perfect for the age group. Her Persian background gives the story a little more dimension.

Please don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.