Character Analysis Essay

Breaking the shyness

          A shy girl, practically hiding in the shadows. Her crush, the most popular guy in school, suddenly gets a bad limp and has to start wearing a leg brace.  Her teacher picks her of all the other students to help this boy while his leg is injured. Her dream is coming true. From then now, her friendship with him grows and she completely transforms into a much more confident person. In Deep Down Popular  by Phoebe Stone, Jessie Lou is the girl who changes from shy to confident around her crush, Conrad Parker Smith.

                At first, Jessie Lou has no clue what to say to Conrad. To her, he’s way too popular to even acknowledge her. She just thinks that she’s the girl in the back of the room, in a completely different world then Conrad. Jessie Lou has liked Conrad since they were little, as it says in the book “In second grade I covered Conrad with kisses whenever I could. In third I gave up my swing or my cookie or my bus seat coming home. By fifth grade I never said anything to him at all”. You see, as time goes on she becomes farther and farther from him. So by the time she’s in sixth grade, during the time of the story, she’s shier then ever.

                After Jessie Lou’s teacher picks her to help Conrad, it’s whole new step. She has to talk to him now. Soon she even relieves that. When they both started to hang out, Jessie Lou just talked the bare minimal to her crush, like when they were first walking home together. What broke the ice was when Conrad’s bike fell into the river and she pulls it out. From then on they start to really communicate. The more she’s around Conrad, the more she seems to talk to him. Their friendship grows until the end, when Conrad kisses her on the cheek. “Conrad’s kiss feels like a little butterfly fluttering against my cheek” as she says and for any girl, their crush kissing them is a dream come true.

                This change is like Hollis from Pictures of Hollis Woods, who is a girl who has been from foster home to foster home. When she is sent to Josie, she could care less. She barely wants to be there, but soon she starts warming up to Josie, their friendship becomes very strong. By the end of the book, Hollis would do anything to be stay with Josie because she finally feels wanted. Hollis and Jessie Lou change in almost the same way by growing a strong friendship.

                The shy girl comes out of the corner and starts being herself around her crush. Just by having more confidence, Jessie Lou completely changes her relationship with Conrad. Throughout the book, she completely changes for the good and her shyness completely floats away. By that point, she is like a completely different girl.