Book Project Choice Book.

        I read the book Red Kayak. The main character's name is Brady. Brady is in 8th grade and 13 years old. He lives in Maryland by Chesapeake Bay; in the Eastern Shore. His neighbors are the DiAngelos. He has two friends named J.T and Digger. He seems like a shy person and is not very talkative. He is shy because he never mentioned other friends besides J.T. and Digger. Brady does not talk to anyone besides them. He is not a very outgoing person. In this story Brady wasn't doing very daring things and wasn't that brave. Brady is an outdoors kind of person who likes a challenge. I don't think he is a very confident person. The confidence is not strong in him, because he is always questioning what he does. For example he suspected that J.T and Digger had something to do with the sinking of the red kayak, but he did not want to say anything. He doesn't always know what to do for sure. He is a person that doesn't care what other people think about him. He is not insecure about himself. Brady just does not care. He can be self-centered at times, but not always. Brady tries to help others before himself. When J.T and Digger were in trouble he would always try to help before caring about himself. When he tried to save Ben's life he tried and tried and never gave up. That shows that he is very considerate and not self centered. After Ben died (the person whose life he tried to save), Ben's mom asked Brady for help. Ben's mom was lonely, so Brady wanted to help. Brady was happy to help and helped her almost every day. He never said no to her. I think Brady has a goal to be even more helpful. After the whole thing with Ben, he felt bad about that. So now he wants to prevent that from happening ever again. He didn't like the feeling of being a hero get taken away from him. It was like getting a medal taken away from him after he deserved to win. I think another goal Brady has is just to be a better person in general. I don't think he feels good at all about what he has done wrong. He especially feels bad about losing Ben. Even though losing Ben was not his fault. There are lots of good characteristics about Brady.

        The theme I think Brady learned was forget about the past. This is the future. He was so paranoid about losing Ben. He blamed himself for the whole thing. Like that he was the one that killed him and that he could have done more. Everyone kept telling him it wasn't his fault and to just forget about him. Ben was dying before he even came. Brady still kept thinking he should have come sooner. I can connect to this theme because I have felt bad about something I did and I wanted a redo. For example one time I accidentally scored for the other team on my goal. I felt really terrible and all I wanted to do was get taken out of the game. It felt like I had cost my team a win. Later in the game I luckily got my goal back, but I still felt super bad. I still felt terrible and lucky that I got that goal back. It was a horrible feeling. Another time I feel it was my fault was in softball. The bases were loaded with two outs and we were down by three. I struck out. I felt I had cost my team another loss. I now know what to do because of what happened. I know NOT to score on my own goal. I could have been wiser on the pitches I swung at. I learned to practice. The best you can do is forget about it and forgive yourself. You are a new person who looks to the future armed with knowledge of the past. There will be other games. Learn from your mistakes. Everybody makes them and nobody is perfect. I can't relate this situation to another book I've read off the top of my head, but there were situations like them. When you make a mistake all you can do is forget about what happened. It was a mistake, yes, but you can't change that. Don't be living with regret. If you keep looking back at your past you are missing out on your now. Forget the past. This is the future.