Reading Journal: "The Outside Boy"

Young Christopher Hurley is a Traveller, an Irish Pavee gypsy who roams with his father, Grandda, Granny, Uncle Finty, Auntie Brigid, and his cousins Martin, John Paul, and baby Maureen. They roam from town to town, carrying all their worldly possessions in their wagons.
Christy is haunted by the story of his mother living only 7 minutes after he was born. But when his grandfather dies, the discovery of an old newspaper photograph and a long-buried secret from his mother's past change his life forever.
I love good stories that are told in a child's voice. This was a lovely one, almost comparable to "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle".
I was sorry for it to end. Perhaps the author will write a sequel so we can see how the things Christy uncovered about his identity influenced and impacted the rest of his life.

Although I rarely do it, I painted the background specially for this review, using "Morning Blue", "Powder Green", "Celery Green", and "French Vanilla". For the title, I used a Pilot Parallel Pen which has a broad-edge calligraphy nib. It was filled with a green ink cartridge that wrote beautiful, very crisp letters. I was thrilled, because it can be problematic writing over acrylic paint. Unfortunately, as the ink dried, it bled terribly. I tried to salvage it a bit by adding thin black lettering over the top, but it still looks pretty sad.

Reading Journal: "The Third Angel"

For this review, I decided to do something similar to the one I did for "Hadrian's Wall" way back in 2004, where I focused on the characters. The ones in this story were very interwoven, although it was not immediately apparent because the plot skipped around in different time periods. The story was definitely not written in chronological order.

I used a variety of media. The title was written with a Prismacolor pencil; the author with a ballpoint pen. The names of the characters were written with a white Sharpie Poster-Paint pen. The woman on the right side was cut from a magazine and the shine reduced with matte medium. The angel was printed off the internet. The woman on the left was also a magazine photo which I painted over with acrylic paints and enhanced her face and clothing wrinkles with Prismacolor pencils. She is glued over a circle of sheet music that was colored with soft pastels.