About Jamilah, John, the Goldfish and the coward inside of all of us.

“You need to know that there are more than ten things you should love about yourself”, John, Jamilahs email buddy writes to her. As Jamilahs life goes on, he becomes a more and more important person to her.  His role in the book grows bigger. He is the first one that she actually can open up to, rely on, and I think that it gives her strength. Maybe, that’s what gave her the courage to tell Peter that the “Goldfish”, Timothy, maybe is not such a bad guy anyway. But I still think that she is everything but brave, because she can’t even treat Timothy the way that he deserves, just because she is afraid of what Peter_The_Popular_Jerk will think about her! I mean, he turns out to be the first person in her real life, excluding John of course, who cares about her, (I knew from the beginning of the book that he would make some difference in her life, I was right, haha! ^^) and she can’t even run after him when walks away after that she has been mean to him? But maybe it would be unfair to judge her too hard, because I think that many of us recognizes this: there is a really nice person in the class, somebody that is not as fake as all the others, but you don’t dare to show your friendship at school because the cool ones that you desperately want to join has classified that person as a nerd. And nerdship is like a virus: if you are with a nerd, you will probably be automatically classified as a nerd too. And sadly, most people are unsecure enough to care about it.

 There is one more thing I find interesting about Jamilahs relationship with John: he, together with Amy, makes her realize that she is not the only one having problems at home. And maybe it’s good for her to see her life in wider perspective. Sometimes I think that it would be good to all of us.

So, I just have to say that I am really sorry that this might not be the most important things that you can talk about in the second part, but since I am really tired and forgot my book at school, this is probably the best I can do. I also apologize for the fact that there are lots of letters and not that much sense… Well, I have to quit now.

Take care <3

/Alexandra.