Romantic Fiction Themes, Phases of Life - Fiction, Books at the Movies

A Walk to Remember (Novel Learning Series)

Name: A Walk to Remember (Novel Learning Series)
Author: Nicholas Sparks
ISBN: 9781455508563

by Nicholas Sparks

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Overview

NOVEL LEARNING SERIES(TM)

A WALK TO REMEMBER by Nicholas Sparks

STUDENT EDITION

"When I was seventeen, my life changed forever . . . " So begins Nicholas Sparks's touching tale of Landon Carter, a teenage boy living in the small town of Beaufort, North Carolina in the late 1950s. Landon is a typical teenager who just wants to have a fun senior year before heading off to college. The last thing he anticipated is Jamie Sullivan, the sweet, pious daughter of the town's Baptist minister.

But on the evening of Beaufort's annual Christmas pageant, Landon will undergo a change of heart that will forever alter the course of his life. In the months that follow, Landon discovers truths that it takes most people a lifetime to learn-truths about the nature of beauty, the joy of giving, the pain of loss, and, most of all, the transformational power of love.

With a NOVEL LEARNING SERIES(TM) Student Guide

· Questions about the text after every few chapters check your comprehension

· Quizzes throughout help you prepare for standardized tests with SAT- and ACT-style questions using vocabulary and grammar from the book

· Sample writing prompts and essays at the end guide you through the elements of an above-average, average, and below-average essay-and explain why!

About the Author, Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Sparks is the author of 16 books. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and children. You can visit the author's web site at www. nicholassparks.com.

Biography

Ever since The Notebook made Nicholas Sparks a word-of-mouth publishing sensation in 1996, he has maintained his status as a bestselling author of tragedy-tinged love stories. His spare, simply themed novels star ordinary people overcome by extraordinary emotions, and changed by them.

It's possible that Sparks might have enjoyed his level of popularity by writing these stories strictly from imagination, but in fact his family's struggles play an important role in many of his books, especially the earliest novels. (For exampleThe Notebook, his tale of a great love affair extending into old age, was inspired by his wife's grandparents; Message in a Bottle drew from Sparks' father's life story and A Walk to Remember from his late sister's.) In addition, a three-week trip he and his older sibling Micah undertook in 2003 became the basis for Three Weeks with My Brother, a unique memoir as moving and tenderhearted as any of his fiction.

Sparks is very methodical about his writing, an approach he makes transparent on his web site with several essays, updates on works in progress, and notes on the mechanics of his novels. Unsurprisingly, critics have faulted him for being too formulaic or cliched. Still, Sparks never fails to move his stories along quickly, maximizing emotional impact and featuring strong, down-to-earth characters. His endings also tend to depart from convention a bit, revealing tragedy where the walk into the sunset should be.

Although he is often classified as a Romance writer, Sparks is quick to point out that his books don't really satisfy the requirements of Romance publishers. Instead, he admits to writing love stories, a different genre altogether. Whatever he cares to call them, one thing's for sure: Nicholas Sparks continues to strike gold with his bittersweet novels of love and loss.

Good To Know

Sparks came to his career in an unconventional way: Sidelined after a running injury at University of Notre Dame, where he had won a full track scholarship and still holds the 4x800 relay record, he decided to write a book after his mother offhandedly suggested it as a way to make him stop brooding. His first novel remains unpublished ("It's a wonderful story -- except for the writing," he wrote later), but he kept trying. He later coauthored an inspirational title called Wokini; but his third novel (The Notebook) was the charm.

Blockbuster film adaptations of Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, and The Notebook have turned Sparks into a successful Hollywood franchise.

Sparks' wife is probably one of the most envied wives around. She met Nicholas in college at spring break, where he informed her that they would be married. She laughed him off, but they were married just over a year later. He told Barnes & Noble.com in a 1999 interview, "I suppose I'm a romantic. Ladies Home Journal has even called me the Most Romantic Husband in America. In fact, I sent my wife a dozen roses today."

Sparks was still selling pharmaceuticals and had only just delivered the final version of The Notebook to his agent when she called, two days after receiving the manuscript, telling him she expected "something big." That something big materialized within the week: a $1 million offer from Warner Books.

Sparks holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Sure to wring yet more tears from willing readers' eyes, the latest novel by the bestselling Sparks is a forced coming-of-age story concerning a pair of unlikely young lovers. In a corny flashback device that mimics The Notebook, 57-year-old Landon Carter spirits himself back to his fateful senior year in high school in Beaufort, N.C., when he was an archetypal troublemaking teenager of the 1950s, changed forever by an unexpected first love. Jamie Sullivan, the Bible-toting minister's daughter, with her drab brown sweaters, spinster hairstyle and sincere, beatific advice, is the obvious target of high school ridicule. Despite conspiring in Jamie's derision, class president Landon, desperate for a date for the homecoming dance, finds himself asking Jamie. Afterwards, Jamie asks him to participate with her in the metaphor-laden school Christmas play (Jamie plays the angel). Landon endures the taunting of his friends and forms an uneasy friendship with Jamie, which is carefully supervised by her father. The teens visit needy orphans, give Oscar-worthy performances in the school play and share dreams watching the sunset. Landon realizes he's in love with Jamie, but, of course, she is hiding a devastating secret that could wring her from Landon's arms forever. Now tortured by his knowledge of what will be her terrible fate, he must make the ultimate decision that catapults him into adulthood. Readers may be frustrated with the invariable formula that Sparks seems to regurgitate with regularity. Although the narrator declares, "My story can't be summed up in two or three sentences; it can't be packaged into something neat and simple that people would immediately understand," this is the author's most simple, formulaic, and blatantly melodramatic package to date. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In Sparks's latest sentimental tale, a 17-year-old boy in 1950s North Carolina finds all his expectations overthrown by the Baptist minister's daughter. Film rights were purchased by the producer of Message in a Bottle. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Sparks (The Notebook, 1996; Message in a Bottle, 1998) carries on in his determined effort to make people cry, this time with an old premise, slow windup, and wobbly pitch. In 1958, high-school senior Landon Carter is 17. Even though his father is a US Congressman, Landon's best friends are on the taunting, swaggering side—football players and such, who hang around at the local drive-in and flaunt their disrespect. So it's strange indeed when Landon gets involved with the nicest girl in town—classmate Jamie Sullivan, who carries a Bible everywhere she goes, does endless good deeds, and is the only child of the widowed Rev. Hegbert Sullivan, the churchman whom Landon and gang love to throw taunts after from hiding places behind trees. But Landon has enrolled in a drama class (for the easy A), and that class is responsible for putting on the annual Christmas play, written by Hegbert, which will be special this year because the author's beloved daughter will have the female lead—she's an angel who ministers to a sorrow-filled widower. When Jamie asks Landon if he won't please be the male lead, what can he say? And what can he do, as rehearsals go on, when he starts not only respecting Jamie, but liking her? Embarrassing as it is before his friends, Landon starts helping her do good deeds, and, on performance night, seeing her true beauty for the first time, falls in love with her. Oh, say it isn't so—since great, deep sorrow lies ahead. For Jamie has a secret that, when she tells it to her loving Landon, explains everything—the Bible she carries, new meanings in the Christmas play, even Jamie's reasons for finding it really special this year. Sparkspulls out all the stops as Landon, from a vantage of 40 years later, tells the story out to its teary end. Weepy wisdom aimed at the holiday trade.