Liz Welch's I Will Always Write Back

The book I read and will be reviewing is I Will Always Write Back, by Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda, with Liz Welch’s help. It is a biography. The theme of the story is that it’s possible to overcome almost anything with assistance.

The story made me think about how people in poor countries like Zimbabwe have serious struggles and can barely survive, and that we can help them like how Caitlin helped Martin. It also made me happy how two people who had never met in real life became such close friends, and the part at the end they finally did get to meet was delightful. What happened in this story was that when Caitlin was 12 and Martin was 14, their schools had a pen pal project, and Caitlin chose to write to Zimbabwe. Martin was

Martin was hardworking and smart, as he did his best in school and got high grades to make it out of poverty and get to college, which was his dream.

The stories are also told from the perspectives of Caitlin and Martin when they were teenagers, and it progresses through time. Caitlin’s side has a lot of parts about what many reader’s lives are like, such as being bored in class or having friendship troubles, which are entertaining to read about. Martin’s side of the story gives us a new side of life which most readers don’t know much of, and it is informative. As the story is nonfiction and all of the events actually happened, it makes the story more interesting. This story was written about the years of 1997 to 2003, from when Martin and Caitlin first started correspondence to when they met in real life. The character development of Martin is that over time, he became more and more responsible and worked harder to keep up his good grades for his future, although he started out quite diligent, so he maintained his efforts. Caitlin’s character development is a bit more major, as she went from being unaware of privilege and problems people face in developing countries to realizing how fortunate she actually is and learning about what struggles Martin and others go through. She also did her best to help Martin and his family so that they could survive and Martin could go to school, while she didn’t really do anything like that before. A moral of the story would be that people can overcome almost anything