SuitabookWrite Before Your Eyes
Lisa Williams Kline
- Reading
- Read alongside the child if the journal’s consequences or threatening figure may prompt questions. Pause after a wish changes other people, and compare Gracie’s personal aims with her thoughts about wider world problems.
- Themes
- Power and responsibility: Gracie first uses the journal for personal changes, then faces repercussions and considers larger problems such as poverty, global warming and world peace. The story sets personal power beside its consequences and later has Gracie consider acting without the journal. It invites reflection on responsibility, but the supplied details do not establish a complete moral judgement.
- Family and belonging: Gracie is described as flying under the radar of overworked parents and outspoken siblings while the journal gives her unusual influence over family circumstances. The situation is present, but there is not enough detail to say whether the book mainly criticises family inattentiveness, treats it sympathetically or resolves it.
- Changing the wider world: Gracie considers using the journal to address major global problems after experimenting with smaller personal changes. The book places large social ambitions beside the limits and risks of magical intervention. It presents these concerns as part of Gracie’s thinking, but does not establish a detailed position on any issue.
- Worth knowing
- Expect fantasy mechanics, unintended consequences and a threatening figure described as a malevolent Cheshire Cat. Personal wishes include influencing family, school and romantic circumstances; the extent of danger, distress or resolution is not clear.