“Good with Boys” By Kristen Iskandrian
I chose this story because I felt while reading this it was very relatable to when I was younger and going through change. With being so into the story and understanding it well I knew I wanted to use it in my Apprentice book. The story was so innocent and pure I loved it. Jill seems to have matured more than the other girls in her class growing a new interest for boys. With her aging insecurities she uses boys to gather their attention to make herself feel confident and secure. She spends so much time studying and interpreting how they act and their interests to connect with them she forgets how to be herself. With that I used different emotions and thoughts she went through during the trip in the story and expressed it through images and words.
I wanted to make this book simply but express emotion. I feel while reading the story its very innocent and new and pure so I wanted to make the pages girly and cute coming from an elementary student. I had the cover page represent a notebook, journal/diary look to it because I feel like when most of us were around that age we had a journal or diary where we would write about our day, what events took place, emotions going through at the time. I added a lot of typically girly colors like pink, red, purple to represent a little girl. For the first page Jill is talking about how personality matters and that you’re nothing without it. I could feel her insecureness in it so I surrounded the quote with positive personality traits and then put all the negative personality traits underneath symbolizing the insecurity below. In the second page I drew a cliff with a pink pretty person at the bottom all alone while the ugly people stand at the top mocking the lonely person. In the third page I drew big heart eyes to symbolize being in love and the crazy for it. In the fourth page I drew a sinking ship to describe her sinking heart for Esau and how ships are supposed to be unsinkable but still can sink if damaged. In page five and six I used one page for the quote and the other is full of gears symbolizing a boys mind. On the back page I drew a trail of butterflies flying into the distance with encouraging words around them to express Jill letting go in the end and just being present in the moment and not focused on boys or trying to change herself. I believe we all have a little big of Jill in us whether it’s dealing with our own insecurities or constantly focusing on the future and our next moves. Sometimes we just need to take a moment to breath and be present in the moment and find ourselves rather than trying to change for other people.
