Okay, so it's a biography from the children's section--- but I liked it so much I had to review it here. Peg Kehret always loved to write, and she had many opportunities growing up in a small town to hone her craft. Even when in high school, instead of scooping ice cream like her classmates, she was able to edit the local newspaper, or write commercials for the local radio station. After she got married, she wrote articles for magazines, and entered writing contests-- once, she even won a Honda Civic. The money she made from her scribbles went into a fund for a trip to Hawaii. Eventually, she wrote novels, held autograph signings, spoke at schools---- and, oh, by the way, she survived polio, helped her father through Alzheimer's, volunteered at the Humane Society, and all sorts of things.

She has had a full life--- and draws upon her experience to be a prolific writer. But it's not just her ability to channel emotion or put words on paper. Part of it is her self-discipline, forcing herself to write five pages a day, no matter what. Part of it is always having her eyes and ears open for a plotline, a character quirk, a random fact that would be cool to include in a book. (If you're buried in an avalanche and don't know which direction to dig, what do you do? Spit.) Despite her accomplishments, awards, and fame, Peg remains down-to-earth and a good example of how to become a good writer. It's not just having brilliant ideas, or a magical way with words. A lot of it comes from inner strength and hard work.

Cullen had a comfortable upbringing in a privileged family in New York. At 23, he roamed around the world, just for the thrill of seeing other places and seeing how other people lived. To fund his excursions, he got a job teaching English in South Korea. Okay, so the job wasn't entirely legal--- but the school was able to take care of him. Nothing, however, could protect him once he got caught smuggling hashish from the Philippines into the country, and all the comfortable familiarity of his previous life evaporated as he found himself cast into South Korea's prisons.

It wasn't just a matter of learning how to function in prison, living alongside human traffickers, rapists, murderers, thieves, and jewel smugglers, being confined to a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, or having to shiver through harsh Asian winters with no heat. It was more than that--- about learning how to reprogram his Western mindset so that he could function in a strict Confucian society, learning how to conform to the South Korean culture, and learning to preserve his identity while shedding his ego and naïvete. Cullen is spoiled and selfish at the beginning of the story, but does a certain amount of growing up through the course of the story as he ends up discovering exactly what he had come to Korea in the first place to find.