Imagine a world filled with dragons and enemies surrounding your borders. And once you turn twenty you have to do Conscription Day where you decide what quadrant you join whether that’s Infantry, Healers, Scribes, or a Rider -the ones who ride the dragons themselves. Depending on what you choose will change the course of your life forever, whether you live a long life or a short one.

This month’s dedicated story genre was “Personal Experience,” I really struggled with finding something to try for the first time that would be fun and useful for both me and the Jenks student body to read and write about. Obviously, I could write about doing a workout class, or listening to an album for the first time, but I wanted something that was equally as relevant to the reader as it was interesting to me. 

Imagine starting a new book, getting a few chapters in, and finding that this new book speaks to you in ways that no book ever has. The characters, the story, and the overarching message makes you feel so understood in a world that doesn’t quite understand you. Now imagine that book being ripped away from you. Each page being torn, crumpled, gone. Banned

We’ve always been told by our English teachers “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Saying that the ugliest book could have the greatest story inside, so don’t just look at the appearance and pass judgment. As much as we are told this as kids we still judge books by their covers and how pretty they look. Even experienced book lovers, which I do count myself as, still judge books by their cover, and even every once in a while we cave into the need of just picking a really pretty book that would look good on our trophy case. I mean our bookshelves. There is a stereotype though that if you pick up a pretty book it’s either a really bad story or super dark.

Every reader at one point in time has read something with romance in it. If it’s only been a small sub-plot or the main genre of the book. Romance is in everything; what you watch, what you read, and what you see around you. Romance in people's personal lives is there or not there at all.