Should We Give Up A Dream Or Love?

            When The Stars Go Blue by Caridad Ferrer is about Soledad Reyes. All her life al she has thought about is dance, dance is Soledad Reyes’s life. She's in her senior year at Miami’s Biscayne High School for the Performing Arts and plans to spend the summer teaching a dance studio, saving up money to audition for dance companies. However, Jonathan Crandall, a musician at Biscayne High School for the Performing Arts, proposes Soledad with the opportunity to play the role of Carmen. Also, part of his proposal is to spend more time with Jonathan, who makes her feel her something no boy ever has before. But when she thinks things couldn't have gotten any better she meets Taz, a boy who plays for a Spanish soccer team. Soon they start flirting with each other which leads to an explosive encounter which Johnathan witnesses. Then at the show that night Johnathan does something unbelievable which breaks her leg and threatens her career as a dancer.
            Soledad had her life pretty much planned out, after she graduated she was raise up money to go to New York City and audition for dance companies.  Ever since she put on ballet slippers she realized she wanted to be a dancer, that is until Johnathan stepped into her life. She started to feel things a girl does when she's with her crush but at the time she didn't know that. Apparently no guy ever in her life had made her feel like that. Johnathan even started to make her rethink her decisions about New York. Soledad even got offered to work with a dance company but she rejected it only to end up with no legs to dance with anymore.  I don't know what I would do if a doctor told me I could never dance again. I would probably commit suicide! My life would be over!
            I think that Soledad had to make a really tough decision on whether to follow her heart or her head. Well, actually, her heart was telling her to dance and to be with Johnathan. So I guess she had to make the tough decision of whether to follow love or her dream. Honestly I would have chosen my dream, especially knowing that I'm with a guy that has past issues. It would be better to just leave him and it alone before things got complicated. Then again, I don't know what's like to love a guy with such intensity so I can't really be giving my opinion. But what it comes down to is if we should follow our dreams or our love.    
          

Dancing

            Dancing is all little Marie van Goethem, a fourteen-year-old ballet dancer in the famed Paris Opéra, can think about in the book Marie, Dancing by Carolyn Meyer. It is the only thing in her life that brings her joy. Unfortunately, she has lived a life of poverty. Along the way having to deal with hunger, her mother's drinking, and her selfish older sister. Then when things could have gone worse she finds an artist, Edgar Degas. He demands Marie's presence in his studio where it appears that her life will change in a big way. He is willing to pay her to pose for his new idea for a sculpture and he promises her to make her a star.
              I can relate so much to this story because I know what it's like to love dancing but not have the money to pay for the classes needed. The difference between me and her is that I'm not a model for a very famous sculpture. Marie van Goethem is the model for the sculpture, Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer. This year for the dance concert since the theme was artwork, the sculpture was used as one of the artworks. The thing about this dance was that it was open to anybody for a solo. I love to dance and I think she is very lucky to find an artist that was willing to pay her for modeling. What surprised me is what Marie van Goethem planned on doing with the money. Instead of paying for more advanced private lessons, she used the money to pay her family through poverty.  
              I would have used the money for selfish reasons, especially since my mother was a drunk my sister was a selfish meanie that made me go through hunger for days and starve me. After that, I wouldn't have given them a single cent of my money. Luckily for Marie's family she still had a big kind heart and must have been raised with somebody wise. Then again I love dancing and would do anything to dance just like Marie van Goethem.