Advanced Essay #1: Fantasy vs. Reality

My goal for this essay is to show my audience why I love fantasy books. I’m very proud of my detailed description of the book cover in my story. My description should paint a clear picture of the book’s cover in the minds of my audience. One thing that I needed improvement in my essay would probably be getting to the point faster in my writing. This is fixed now, but before it was just extra writing that wasn’t needed. I hope you enjoy the experience of reading my essay.

Near the bottom/ middle of the picture is a fight scene between two teenage boys and their horses. On the bottom left side of the picture is a depiction of one of the two boys. It starts out with a rising black thundercloud with yellow lightning streaks coming from it. Rising from the thundercloud is the boy wielding a sword on a horse. The boy is caucasian, with a sort of goldish tan and golden blonde hair. He is raising his golden sword with his right hand and holding on to the horse with his left hand. He is wearing a purple shirt and making an angry/ screaming face toward his opponent. The horse this guy is riding has the same look as the thundercloud, black with many yellow lightning streaks for veins. Also, this horse’s eyes are a glowing red. The horse seems to be rearing up, but from the middle of his stomach and down is covered in the black thundercloud.

Next is the teenage boy on the bottom right of the picture rising from a violent wave of water is with a sword on a horse. This boy is caucasian as well, but his skin does not have a golden tan-like tone to it and he has ruffled black hair; his skin looks a little darker. He is raising his shining bronze sword with his right hand and holding onto his horse with his left hand. He is wearing an orange shirt and he is also making an angry/ screaming face at his blonde haired opponent. This boy’s horse is a black pegasus but you can’t see the wings too well, so don’t worry about the wings. Like the thunder horse, the pegasus seems to be rearing up as well. But from the the middle of the pegasus’ stomach and down, the waves are covering it. Both of the two horse’s front legs appear to be touching each other as they are reared up near the bottom middle of the picture.

Right above this battle near the top of the picture, in a crimson red color, is a huge face of an owl. It’s not the owl’s entire face, but just it’s eyes and small beak. The eyes are drawn to stare right at you. Creating a “C” like formation around both owl eyes are feathers. Right in between the owl’s eyes is a medium streak of white lightning, and around the outer parts of the owl’s face is small minor streaks of lightning. Above the owl’s face, the picture just does a transition from crimson red to black. The last thing is that starting from the top of the two horse’s heads and going toward the bottom of the picture, behind the battle scene and between the black thundercloud and violent wave is a sort of whitish and yellowish color.

This picture that I have delicately described is the cover for a book called, “The Mark of Athena”, by Rick Riordan. The day my mom took me to Barnes and Nobles in 2012 to get this book, I unintentionally memorized every detail of the cover. It was so inviting to my young and curious eyes that I had to have it. Like most fantasy books, looking at this book made me hype to delve into it. From then up to now, diving into the worlds of fantasy stories is such a beautiful feeling. It pulls you away from reality, which for me was an amazing thing. Back when I was twelve and reading, “The Mark of Athena” getting pulled away from reality meant getting away from homework, annoying teachers, and some responsibilities. Now that I’m a teenager in the eleventh grade, reading books like, “The Mark of Athena”, means getting away from more homework, bigger responsibilities, benchmarks, the major nuisances of this world, and the the idea of growing up. Sometimes, the thought of growing up can be scary. So to make myself feel better, I would pick up a fantasy book and delve into it. Not only are fantasy books so interesting and exciting to read, but they are also very comforting and they give me a sense that I will be alright.

Even though fantasy alleviates reality, reality is still reality. Growing up as a leisure reader, I soon had to learn the hard way that I won’t always be able to read the books that that I want. Whent started my first year of Science Leadership academy, I was already in the middle of a good book. But then I was assigned lots of homework and lots of educational reading. Which was very boring. Because of all this work, I then had to set my leisure reading aside. Reality had won this round against fantasy. I had thought that I would be able to read my book again after all my work was done. But as the work progressed to greater amounts and as the school reading increased, I wasn’t able to catch up on my leisure reading until the next year. After my freshmen year, I had thought that reality always wins against fantasy. It wasn’t until my sophomore year that I learned that fantasy can sometimes beat reality too. That is to say, I found time to do some leisure reading. It was then that I created a balance between Fantasy and Reality. I made sure that not only would I get my school work done and get good grades, but that I would find time do some leisure reading.

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