Reviews for Words by Heart

The average rating for Words by Heart based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-05-17 00:00:00 Roger Williams I was shelving books and came across this little book that had somehow wandered far away from where it was supposed to be. I'm so glad. What a beautifully written book about love and forgiveness. Chris you may be inspired or discouraged by the fact that it took the author 35 years to get published. Those of you who are easily bored by my ramblings (that should probably include all of you)may quit reading now, because I have a lot of lovely quotes from the book that I want to include for my own selfishly personal future perusal. Favorite Quotes: "'Nobody's better than anybody else. The Lord has a special need for all of us, or we wouldn't be here. But the thing you want to strive for, always, is to be better than yourself. And we all fall short on that.'" "The work wasn't hard--her tiredness was different from field-work tiredness. The strain came from feeling two ways about everything. It was more like being in a war without knowing for sure who was your enemy or your friend, or even what you were fighting about." "Then she knew why Papa was patient. He looked at everybody. He really stopped and looked, and saw inside." "'Nobody needs to be defended,' Papa said, 'Just understood.'" "It had been so easy,when she was little, to grab him around the neck and paste juicy kisses on his face to say she loved him. But now, just when he opened up his heart and his grown-up world to her with so much love of his own, she couldn't do it. She didn't know why. Some kind of instinct, maybe, saying, If I went on loving you like that, I'd never leave, I'd never ache for anything else...She hoped he knew, in his grownness what her feelings were." "She couldn't ever imagine being as old as Papa. Forty was forever." "Since mankind began, it seemed like, one group always banded against another group that lived or looked or thought differently. Putting the different ones down to make themselves seem higher." "Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you. Give to him that asketh thee. The words that had been so beautiful to say, so easy, turned to stone. No one had told her, not Papa, not the preacher, that they could change like that when they had to be lived,and crush her with their weight." "She couldn't love him. But she loved someone who knew how to love him, and that was a beginning."

Review # 2 was written on 2011-12-16 00:00:00 Randall Lum Okay, so here's a theory I've been working on: schools are secretly conspiring to turn all children against reading forever. And why do I think this, you may ask. Well, I'm going to tell you. Because teachers wouldn't assign such mind numbingly boring books without knowing the consequences. For example, a close friend of mine was recently assigned The Odyssey for Honors English. This friend usually enjoys myths from all cultures, but this was just too much for her in such a short time span. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that it totally changed her opinion of mythology. What I think is the fault with the way English is taught in schools today is that they're trying to teach literary elements rather than a love of literature. Literary elements aren't that important when you leave school, but a love of literature is. Adults wonder why some kids hate reading books when the answer is right in front of them. Kids don't read because that's what school indirectly teach them to do. This is not a hate-on-schools-and-English-teachers rant. I usually enjoy most of the books I read in English, and my English teachers have always been encouraging. Still, the majority of good books I've read in my life I've had to find on my own without any guidance. My parents aren't exactly the literary types, and I doubt my brothers have read anything since high school. I'm the bookworm of the family. And so now that I've bored you with a rant and useless information about myself, I'll get on to my review and why that first paragraph was relevant. I wrote all of that because I was assigned to read Words by Heart in middle school, and it wasn't something I enjoyed. The major contributing factor had to be that I read it in school and therefore dissected it until there was nothing left. (Another thing I hate about English. They dissect things to the point where the words hold no magic for anyone anymore.) After all those quizzes and tests on this miniscule 135 page book, I was sick of it. And let's not forget the snail-speed rate we were forced to read it at. Two chapters were do a week. I could've finished this in one sitting. Reading so slow definitely took away some of the fun in reading this. Of course, there is also the fact that I didn't even enjoy this to start with. It's really just a subpar historical fiction book aimed for elementary and middle school students with low reading levels. I'd passed this level by the third grade when I read the unabridged version of Little Women to win a reading contest. There was just nothing left for me to enjoy. The characters were average and the issues overdone if not still realistic. There was a nice twist at the end, but even that wasn't enough to revive this novel. In other words, it was perfect to teach a bored middle school class. Recommendation: Don't read it. Hopefully, you won't ever have to read it for school.