I read the book a Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks.  The main character in this story is Landon Carter.  Landon lives in Beaufort, North Carolina and goes to Beaufort high school.  He was the type of person who would go to church and not really pay attention and only went because his parents made him go.  He was a typical teenage boy who would  sometimes be disrespectful to the
reverend and find himself getting into trouble.  He wasn't the biggest fan of school so he didn't have very good grades either.

       His father was not dead and his parents were not divorced, but he didn’t get to see his father a lot.  His father was congressman and instead of having his whole family move to Washington, D.C  he just moved and he didn’t come back very often to visit.  Landon and his dad didn’t get along very well either.  When his father was home he would talk about how Landon should go to Harvard, but Landon wanted to go the University of North Carolina.   He struggled to talk to his father and never really told his father how he really felt about things.  Because of his lack of ability to communicate with his father, he ended up running for student body president to please his dad.  His father believed that he would get into Harvard for sure if he was the student body president.  Landon would sometimes thinks about what it would have been  like if his father would have been around more as a child.  Would they understand each other better?

            Landon changed a lot in this book. When he didn’t have a date for the dance he had to ask Jamie.  He never really talked to Jamie a lot and her dad was the reverend at the church he went too.  She was almost the opposite of him.  Jamie was the type of person who carried a bible and she was loved by all of the adults because she was so nice and never got into trouble.  After the dance she asked Landon to be in the play.  She didn’t tell him why, she just told him that this year had to be special.  He started to hang out with her more and then he started to fall in love with her.  He began to grow and change the more time he spent with Jamie.  He would read the bible with her and he would help get money to buy the orphan’s presents for Christmas.  When Jamie told him that she had leukemia he felt angry and sad at the same time.  He felt that there was something he could do to help her and he tried really hard to help her, but there was nothing he could do.

           

            I think that the theme of this book is that you should try new things and talk to people that you've never talked to before.  Landon would have never have talked to Jamie if he wouldn't have needed a date for the dance, but he actually started to like Jamie after that.  That's when Landon started to talk to Jamie a little bit more.  Jamie asked Landon if he could be in the play that she was in because they needed more people.  Landon couldn’t say no because he knew it would make Jamie sad if he did.  He didn’t really want to be in the play.  He wanted to hang out with his friends after school, but he still decided to be in it.

            After the play Landon helped Jamie collect all of the money that people donated so she could buy gifts for the orphans.  There wasn’t a lot of money so without telling Jamie he added money and that was the best Christmas that the orphans and Jamie ever had.  That’s when Landon started falling in love with Jamie.  He changed a lot because of Jamie.  He didn’t even care when his friends were making fun of him.  When Jamie got sick he would read the bible to her and he never used to read the bible before. 

            Just because Landon got to know Jamie better he started being a lot nicer.  He would do things that he would never do before like reading the bible, listening in church, and he started praying for Jamie when she got sick.  Jamie also helped Landon and his family come closer together.  Landon also started getting along with his father a lot better. 

            Ever since Landon started talking to Jamie his life started to change and he is a lot different now.  He never used talk to Jamie at all and he just though that she was really weird.  He never really got to know her until now and he realized that he really likes Jamie.  That is why I think that the theme of this book is that you should talk to people that you have never talked to before and try new things.