This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl

Most of the other reviewers have said everything I can say. This is a collection of letters, journal entries, stories, and essays by and about a girl named Esther Grace Earl. She was a big fan of author John Green, his You Tube channel (Vlogbrothers) with his brother and the community

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(Nerdfighters) that surrounded it. John Green got to know her before she passed away from thyroid cancer; though his book The Fault in Our Stars is not about her, she was certainly an influence. Esther was young when she passed away, and though this book will hit readers hard emotionally, it is very tastefully and beautifully done. I read it all in one day and cried frequently.

Fans of The Fault in Our Stars and Nerdfighters in general will definitely want to read this.

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I haven't cried from a book in a really long time. I knew ester would make me cry though.

I haven't cried from a book in a really long time. I knew ester would make me cry though.

I haven't cried from a book in a really long time. I knew ester would make me cry though.

I haven't cried from a book in a really long time. I knew ester would make me cry though.

Not to minimize the tragedy of Esther Grace Earl's untimely death from cancer, This Star Won't Go Out is not an overly interesting book, at least the first 50 pages aren't and you need to get through those to see if the latter part of the book is interesting. I never made it past page 50.

Esther (Persian for "star") Earl was a bright and talented, but very normal teenage girl who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 12. Despite her declining health, she lived a hope-filled and generous life focused on loving and caring for others. She was a cheerful, positive and

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encouraging daughter, sister and friend. She passed away in 2010 at the age of 16, but she left her mark on this world despite leaving it much too soon.

This unique memoir is a collection of her journals, stories, letters, and sketches, with photographs, and essays written by her family and friends to help tell her story.

Even though this book is aimed at young adult readers, I am 51 years old, and I loved it! I am living with terminal cancer myself, and I wish I could do it with even half of the grace that Esther possessed. Even with our age differences, I could relate to so much of Esther's thoughts and feelings about living with terminal illness, and the roller coaster of emotions that it puts you through.

There are very sad moments in this book, of course, but overall, it's a very joyous book at the same time, a celebration of her life, a life well lived in such a short time; not for her accomplishments, but for how she cared for and loved others. Esther readily admits her flaws also, which makes you love her even more, because she was human.

I love this quote from the introduction to her story by author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars): "And most of all, she was a person, complete and complex. We have a habit of imagining the dying as fundamentally other from well. We hold them up as heroes and imagine they have reserves of strength forbidden to the rest of us. We tell ourselves that we will be inspired through the stories of their suffering- we will learn to be grateful for every day, or learn to be more empathetic, or whatever. These responses, while certainly well-intentioned, ultimately dehumanize the dying: Esther was uncommon not because she was sick, but because she was Esther, and she did not exist so that the rest of us could learn Important Lessons about Life."
I totally feel the same way, but I never knew how to put it into words, and I thank John Green for doing so. I also thank her friends and family for sharing their
"Star" with the rest of us.

(I'm sorry if this review is a long one, but this book just resonates with me so much!). I also loved reading about Esther's online community of friends, and how they were all there for her. I am very lucky also to have many wonderful online friends, and they are just as "real" as IRL (in real life) friends, even though a former friend of mine once told me they were not. And on that note, I have to quote John Green just one more time:
“I dislike the phrase 'Internet friends,' because it implies that people you know online aren't really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance. Good friendships, online or off, urge us toward empathy; they give us comfort and also pull us out the prisons of our selves."

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Esther (Persian for "star") Earl was a bright and talented, but very normal teenage girl who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 12. Despite her declining health, she lived a hope-filled and generous life focused on loving and caring for others. She was a cheerful, positive and

Show More

encouraging daughter, sister and friend. She passed away in 2010 at the age of 16, but she left her mark on this world despite leaving it much too soon.

This unique memoir is a collection of her journals, stories, letters, and sketches, with photographs, and essays written by her family and friends to help tell her story.

Even though this book is aimed at young adult readers, I am 51 years old, and I loved it! I am living with terminal cancer myself, and I wish I could do it with even half of the grace that Esther possessed. Even with our age differences, I could relate to so much of Esther's thoughts and feelings about living with terminal illness, and the roller coaster of emotions that it puts you through.

There are very sad moments in this book, of course, but overall, it's a very joyous book at the same time, a celebration of her life, a life well lived in such a short time; not for her accomplishments, but for how she cared for and loved others. Esther readily admits her flaws also, which makes you love her even more, because she was human.

I love this quote from the introduction to her story by author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars): "And most of all, she was a person, complete and complex. We have a habit of imagining the dying as fundamentally other from well. We hold them up as heroes and imagine they have reserves of strength forbidden to the rest of us. We tell ourselves that we will be inspired through the stories of their suffering- we will learn to be grateful for every day, or learn to be more empathetic, or whatever. These responses, while certainly well-intentioned, ultimately dehumanize the dying: Esther was uncommon not because she was sick, but because she was Esther, and she did not exist so that the rest of us could learn Important Lessons about Life."
I totally feel the same way, but I never knew how to put it into words, and I thank John Green for doing so. I also thank her friends and family for sharing their
"Star" with the rest of us.

(I'm sorry if this review is a long one, but this book just resonates with me so much!). I also loved reading about Esther's online community of friends, and how they were all there for her. I am very lucky also to have many wonderful online friends, and they are just as "real" as IRL (in real life) friends, even though a former friend of mine once told me they were not. And on that note, I have to quote John Green just one more time:
“I dislike the phrase 'Internet friends,' because it implies that people you know online aren't really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance. Good friendships, online or off, urge us toward empathy; they give us comfort and also pull us out the prisons of our selves."

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I knew Esther. Not as well as anyone in Catitude knew her, but we chatted in those BlogTV live shows back in the day. She was such an amazing person, and I was devastated when she passed. I love that this book exists, as it's a way for Esther's words and writing to live on and find new people to

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inspire.

Along with writings from her journals and blog posts, and even some transcripts from her videos, there are also stories from the Catitude members who knew her best, her friends and family, other great people that got to know her like the DeGeorge brothers and Andrew Slack, and even her doctor. And yes, John Green writes the introduction and shares his memories of Esther, but that's really only a potential draw for those who only know about Esther through her inspiration on The Fault in Our Stars. The rest of us, the Nerdfighters and the potential Nerdfighters out there, are drawn to Esther. John may have introduced many of us to her, but she had a light that was all her own.

I am so happy that the Earls put this book together. That we get to read Esther's unfortunately unfinished fiction along with her diary entries is such a treat. She was an amazing writer and would have gone far, I think.

This Star Will Never Go Out!

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BLURB: A collection of the journals, fiction, letters, and sketches of the late Esther Grace Earl, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 16. Photographs and essays by family and friends will help to tell Esther’s story along with an introduction by award-winning author John Green who dedicated

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his #1 bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars to her.

RATING: 5 STARS FOR THIS STAR WON'T GO OUT BY: ESTHER EARL
STARTED: JULY 9,2014
FINISHED: JULY 17,2014





REVIEW: This book was filled with all of Esthers past diaries,notes, and letters. They fulfilled my sadness for how she felt as I was reading her letters and writings. She made me think more about living my life out and doing events that I felt was right for me. Currently I got extractions for four teeth today and I was thinking about Esther and how she went through more pain then me and she had cancer! I was telling myself to stop crying just because I was thinking what if I had something worst to me happen then just this. It made me think more logically about thinking everything through and do the best for me and my family. I hope Esther's legacy lives on through everyone and everyone gets to read this book.

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I'll try to keep this simple, since those that LOVE!!! this book and LOVE!!!, The Fault in Our Stars, will be totally clueless about why everyone else doesn't LOVE!!! this book. Despite the credit being given to Esther Earl for this book, it is clearly packaged and enhanced by others. Yes, the

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nominal author was a gifted, attractive, personable, white girl with a particularly supportive family and an incurable disease. She was also much more "normal" than those people who have canonized would possibly concede. It's really too bad a "normal" person can't be appreciated for just being another human being. That should be enough...even without dying young.

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I had been wanting to read this book for a long time. Not that I have much of a connection to Esther, but because I have a connect to John Green. I read some reviews and they are very mixed. I have mixed feelings as well.

I do agree that if not for John Green, no one would care. I honestly would not

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have picked up this book and read it if he had no part in it. That’s awful to say but it is incredibly true.

My heart does break when children die of disease and cancers. They are too innocent and young to deserve such pain. But this book doesn’t show me or any other reader anything new or different. They are just journal entries. Journal entries and bible quotes and website updates. Nothing so deserving of a book so large it makes my arm fall asleep while I read it. It’s all relatively generic.

I’m not completely heartless in the fact that I do feel for the family. It’s heartbreaking. I get it. I don’t know what I expected, but it was more then what I got.

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