The heart-warming story, The Running Dream, by Wendelin Van Draanen, inspires any injured athlete to keep on going and stay positive. Jessica is a phenomenal narrator that stays consistent throughout the book and uses basic vocabulary so that the reader doesn’t have a hard time understanding the story. To the readers who don’t like to read, this book will keep you locked in because it’s such a fast, easy going book. The author wrote her book for high school student athlete audiences. Even if the reader isn’t an athlete or have a passion for sport, they will still enjoy reading about how Jessica dealt with all the “road blocks” occurring at one time. Once the first chapter is read, there’s no stopping. Every chapter there’s a new drama scene that occurs that leads the reader into the next chapter to find out what happens. The way the Draanen put the story together was extremely phenomenal. The descriptive words easily paint a vivid picture of the scene in the readers mind. The emotional roller coaster that Jessica goes through is so powerful that the reader can actually sense it. Even though this book is fictional, it seems so real with the connections of reality and real life problems. Its very common for an athlete to get injured or even have to get a prosthetic leg. Normally, athletes don’t want to try to make a come back because they are disgusted with the feel and look of an abnormal body. With Jessica, all she wanted to do is run again no matter how she looked. At times she feared that she would never touch a track again, but she never let her limb discourage her from even giving it a shot. I love the message that came out of this book through both Jessica and Rose. The gist was to not see a person’s disability, but to only see their personality and motivation. In this book the reader will love the epic journey Jessica has taken on the road to recovery. The ending gives the most heart touching feeling any person could feel. Jessica is the perfect example that excuses shouldn’t mean a thing or get in the way of trying to accomplish a goal. Anyone who has read The Running Dream, will agree that it is a very entertaining book that makes the reader smile once the last page is read. There’s only one back drop about the book. I would have wanted a better ending with a few pages about Jessica’s senior year on the track team.