Hi, I’m Rebecca. I write books and I write here at This Joyful Mess to inspire everyone to find JOY in the everyday messes of life. Here you’ll find inspiration, educational resources, and so much more. Please explore and connect—I’d love to hear from you!

Witness this!
Reading List Rebecca Grabill Reading List Rebecca Grabill

Witness this!

This book was made up of poems from different points of view and usually in differing and discernible voices all telling one story.

The plot, though ... the story seemed to end at the wrong spot. It ended with...

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The Gift of Suffering: The Giver by Lois Lowry
Reading List Rebecca Grabill Reading List Rebecca Grabill

The Gift of Suffering: The Giver by Lois Lowry

Lowry opens The Giver with a description of fear and immediately cements the unusualness of the world she’s created as well as giving us insight into the young protagonist, Jonas. She also is so deliciously good at creating a Utopia that seems wonderful, at the start, and only slowly...

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How to Build a Mosque
Reading List Rebecca Grabill Reading List Rebecca Grabill

How to Build a Mosque

The intro is sort of dry, but the melding of fiction and nonfiction with fascinating detail on construction held my interest to the end. Yet why was there such a need for bathing? (I know it’s ritual bathing, but the text doesn’t tell me this.) There’s a ton of info on engineering, but not much...

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Secrets, Platforms, Bizarre Britishisms
Reading List Rebecca Grabill Reading List Rebecca Grabill

Secrets, Platforms, Bizarre Britishisms

Rich and fun fantasy. Ibbotson starts off with quaint Brittishisms, ghosts, and secret doors to other worlds. What’s not to love? Loads of fantastical invention and a heavy dose of political correctness. Atmospheric with a distant 3rd person narrator, similar in voice to others like...

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