'This Star Won't Go Out,' The Inspirational True Story of the Late Esther Earl In Her Own Words

This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl by Esther Earl

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Esther Grace Earl was only 16 years old when she lost her battle with thyroid cancer in 2010. She never wanted to be anything other than a writer, and she was one her way to being a great one. Her parents, Wayne and Lori Earl, along with Esther's four siblings, friends, and the medical team who worked with her, created this book to preserve Esther's one-of-a-kind writings and drawings. Esther's kindness, compassion, thoughtfulness, and love shine through the words and images she left behind.

Not only did she love her family and friends deeply, but she also cared about doing something good for the world and helping people she never met. She had a strong faith in God that helped her get through the worst of her chemotherapy and the breathing problems she had related to her cancer.

Esther loved Harry Potter, Dr. Who, her cats Blueberry and Pancake, and John and Hank Green's Vlog Brothers videos, and she never forgot to be awesome. She was an amazing person, so it's a wonderful thing that her voice is still able to be shared with the world. The media have an unfortunate tendency to dismiss and belittle things that are geared toward teens, and especially teenage girls, and it can be hard for a teen girl's genuine voice to be heard - all the more reason to listen to Esther in her own words.

John Green was already working on The Fault In Our Stars when he met Esther. She served as an inspiration for the fictional Hazel Grace Lancaster - note they share a middle name - but Green was very careful to see Esther as a person, a friend, and not some kind of research project. He's a good human being like that.

Sometimes this book made me want to cry, but that's okay. It's okay to miss someone's presence from the world when that presence so clearly made the world a better place. It's too bad that we'll never know the answer to the riddle Esther wrote into the fantasy story she started, but what she did leave behind was a legacy of awesome.

I do wish she would've been able to finish her romantic comedy story, though. It had some really nice elements, even in its raw state. Shades of The Devil Wears Prada, but with a clear romance bent.

Please, if you know of any other books like this one - memories of a kid who left the world too soon - recommend them to me. I think a book like this is an ideal tribute to a creative young person who is, sadly, no longer with us. Their spirits live on in the art they left behind and the way they made other people feel.

I've also started following http://tswgo.tumblr.com/. It's the Tumblr page of the organization founded in Esther's name that helps the families of children with cancer. Great organization. Check it out.

I purchased This Star Won't Go Out with my own funds at a brick-and-mortar Barnes and Noble. I was not obligated to write this review in any way.

View all my reviews on Goodreads

Book Club Friday: Current #FridayReads 6-20-14

Basically, I have a different book going in every room in the house. Let's start with the book I've been reading off and on (when not distracted by more exciting books), Middlemarch by George Eliot. 

I'm slightly more than 50% (that's just over 400 pages) through this enormous paperweight. It's interesting, but it's not exciting. I had hoped Eliot would be another Jane Austen, since they're writing about approximately the same era in British history. However, I don't find Eliot to be nearly as witty or entertaining as her contemporary. I'll stick with it just to be able to say I've read it, but it's not a can't-put-it-down like certain other thick classics I have known (i.e. Gone With the Wind, From Here to Eternity, The Count of Monte Cristo). 

Are there any Middlemarch fangirls out there? 

On my bedside table (actually on the floor next to the table) is The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling. I'm about a third of the way through it. It's funny because there's a Mr. Farebrother in Middlemarch, and the character whose (MILD SPOILER) death is a motivating factor in Rowling's plot is named Barry Fairbrother. 

There's a banker named Mr. Bulstrode in Middlemarch, and I can't help but wonder if the early-19th-century Bulstrodes were secretly a wizarding family, and if their descendant is the same Millicent Bulstrode whose cat's hair Hermione Granger mistakenly used in her polyjuice potion. 

It does seem like Rowling is a George Eliot fan. Because both books deal with small English towns and groups of people being petty and venal and scheming to benefit from a gentleman's death, some people refer to The Casual Vacancy as Mugglemarch. I'm liking it, though. No one can say Rowling isn't witty. 

In the kitchen, when I get bored while waiting for my grits to thicken, I'm reading This Star Won't Go Out by Esther Earl with Lori and Wayne Earl. It's the collection of writings and artwork by Esther, who passed away at the age of 15 from thyroid cancer. In a complicated way, she's part of the inspiration for Hazel Grace Lancaster in John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. 

I previewed This Star Won't Go Out here. 

Esther's only ambition in life was to be a writer, and you could tell she would've been a great one if her talent had been able to mature. In some ways it's very gratifying to read how much of her personality survives in her extant work, but at the same time, her loss is a very sad one. It makes me think of all the other kids who could've been someone great and never got the chance. 

On a much lighter note, the book I've been leaving in the car and reading whenever I get a little bored away from home is J.R. Ward's Crave, the second novel in her Fallen Angels series (about a decisive contest for human souls between archangels and demons). I just can't get into this series the way I can Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood novels. 

Book Boyfriend #311: Isaac Rothe. 

In the living room, I'm reading a book that arrived in the mail Tuesday, via Amazon's Vine program. I was in the mood for serious nonfiction, so I chose Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack by Rupert Shortt. It documents incidents of religious-based violence in Christian communities, organized by country. The countries in which it's most dangerous to belong to a Christian church are almost all in Asia, but a few are in Africa, and only Turkey is in Europe. 

The cover shows the window of a church in Egypt and a Coptic Christian girl looking out fearfully.

So far, the author has done a good job of being fair to the people of other religious faiths who share space with Christian neighbors. This is not, for example, a book about what's wrong with Islam. The author acknowledges that most Muslims, like most Christians, are anti-violence, and that some Christians have committed acts of religious-based violence. 

Lastly (I think), in my Nook I'm about halfway through Play Him Again, a murder mystery set in 1920s Los Angeles, by Jeffrey Stone. 

What's fun about this book is how it weaves in historical figures of the period, such as Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Alla Nazimova. (You may remember Alla Nazimova from the nonfiction The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood.)

How many things are you reading? 

Top 10 Tuesday: 10 Books I Wouldn't Be Sad If Santa Brought Me

Inspired by this post at It's a Book Life, which in turn took its cue from this post at The Broke and the Bookish.

I love to give books for the holidays, as my nieces will find out tonight (they're also getting Subway gift cards so they can pay for their favorite sandwiches with their own money - very exciting when you're 7 and 9) and my cousin's baby daughter will find out tomorrow.

Which books would I most like to get from Santa Claus? I checked with my Goodreads to-read list, and here's what I came up with (in no particular order):

1. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb

2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

I really want to see the movie, because Emma Watson looks amazing in the previews, but I want to read the book first. I've simply refused to pay the full retail at my local Barnes and Noble.

3. Delirium by Lauren Oliver

4. Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

5. Lillian Holmes and the Leaping Man by Ciar Cullen

Gender-swapped, steampunk Sherlock Holmes? Uh, yes please!

6. The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming by Lemony Snicket

Hanukkah is over, but my desire to read this is not.

7. Christian Bale: The Inside Story of the Darkest Batman by Harrison Cheung

8. House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones

9. Little Women and Me by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

10. This Star Won't Go Out by Esther Earl

Okay, this one doesn't come out until January 28th, 2014, but Santa can preorder it for me if he wants to.

Which books are you hoping for on Christmas morning?

'This Star Won't Go Out' Teaser

On Thursday, Publishers Weekly sent me an e-mail with the subject line "John Green and Esther Earl: Lives Connected by Words." It's a teaser for the book This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Work of Esther Grace Earl, with additional writing by Esther's parents Lori and Wayne Earl and an introduction by John Green.

Esther, diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was only 12, passed away from the disease at the age of 16 in 2010. She's the real-life inspiration for Hazel Grace in John Green's The Fault in Our Stars.

The title is a play on Esther's name, which is the Persian word for "star." She was named after the Biblical Queen Esther.

The e-mail took me to a page of Scribd (the website for uploading and reading e-books, many of them free) with a sample of the book to download. I can't share the link because the link won't work for anyone else's computer. The sample is only 11 pages long. It contains:

- Childhood photos of Esther from 2000 and 2003, showing her bright blue eyes

- Lori and Wayne's introduction, writing about who Esther was as an individual and some of her diary-keeping habits. They write, "She loved words, felt their power and believed in the magic of story."

-A photo of Esther reading a Judy Blume book in 2009, and another of her using a laptop inside Boston's Children's Hospital after she became ill

-Esther's drawing of colorful flowers on a black stalk, underneath a blue sun

-A facsimile of a note written in Esther's own handwriting, to her parents on their anniversary. It reads, in part:

"Parents, I love you two. So much. I am so lucky to have such amazing people raising me. Because...really, I wouldn't be who I am today if not for the love and care of you two. Please realize that you  are amazing. I thank God that He blessed us with two such loving people.

"Cancer is hard. I wouldn't have made it this far if it weren't for my family. Thank you, very much, for being here for me. It makes it seem less hard."

I'm very excited for this book. I want to get to know this young aspiring writer who lost her life too soon. I want to read her words and understand her life from her point of view. I never made a blog post with my review of TFIOS, and part of that was because I was so shocked by how good the book was, I couldn't articulate anything other than, "This is really, really, really good and you should just read it right now." That Esther Grace inspired the goodness is the very reason I want to read her very own words. I want my life to be connected to hers by words.

It might break my heart - TFIOS sure did. I cried, and then I dropped the book, and then I called it a stupid book because it made me cry and drop it. But when that happens, you know a piece of literature has seeped into your heart because it deserved to. Heartbreak or no, I must read TSWGO. Esther Grace Earl didn't have a long life on earth, so now she'll live in readers' hearts.

This Star Won't Go Out is available for pre-order on Barnes and Noble and Amazon now, and will officially be published on January 28, 2014.

Another book release I am eagerly awaiting:

...and, of course, Allegiant by Veronica Roth (October 22, 2013). The same actress, Shailene Woodley, will play both Hazel Grace and Tris Prior at the movies. If you follow John Green on Tumblr, you'll see he is currently fangirling over the filming of his book. 

P.S. You can add John Green and his brother/fellow writer Hank Green to the list of cool people from Indiana.