53 pages • 1 hour read

Ways to Make Sunshine

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-7

Chapters 8-11

Chapters 12-15

Chapters 16-19

Chapters 20-23

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Public Speaking

Public speaking is a motif in the text that represents Ryan’s growth in overcoming obstacles and learning that trying is more important than succeeding. For much of the text, public speaking is a stressor for Ryan, and her challenges with public speaking cause her to struggle with her self-esteem. After technical difficulties make Ryan too nervous to give her Easter speech, she fears that she has failed to live up to her name. She tells her mother afterwards: “I’m not a leader. I’m a girl who gets so scared standing in front of people that I freeze and forget my words. That’s not a good leader at all” (68). Ryan’s parents have instilled in her the goal of always trying to live up to her name, which means “leader.” By not giving her Easter speech, Ryan feels she has failed in her goal to be a leader.

Her mother reminds her that “all I ask of you is that you try” (68), which inspires Ryan to perform her speech for her family on the ride home from church, knowing that her mother “is right about trying and trying and trying again” (69). This lesson, that trying is more important than success, encourages Ryan to take risks to become the leader she knows she can be and to overcome her fear.

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At the end of the text, Ryan tries and succeeds in overcoming her fear of public speaking by “living up to her name” and volunteering to be the announcer for the talent show, effectively leading it. This act of leadership would have been almost unimaginable to Ryan at the beginning of the text as she stands in front of her church congregation having forgotten “all the words to my speech” (65). Although she is nervous about acting as the MC of the talent show, she calms herself down by taking a deep breath and telling herself: “I can do this. I just have to try” (164). She does not say anything to herself about failure or needing to be the best in order to succeed, all she has to do is try.

Ryan also acts as a leader in helping her new friend, Hannah, also overcome her pre-show anxiety. Ryan tells Hannah: “You told me nerves are good, right? That we can use that energy to push us to do our best–all we can do is our best” (165). In this scene, Ryan not only encourages herself to try, but also acts as a leader in helping someone else overcome their fear; she gives Hannah the same permission to do her best without fear of failure. This positive self-talk and leadership amounts to Ryan succeeding after all. As she stands on stage, seeing her father and brother supporting her in the audience: “My nerves settle, just a tiny bit, and for this first part, I don’t even need to look at the script” (166). While success is less important than trying, this scene illustrates that Ryan is able to overcome her fears precisely because she was willing to try again.

Imagination and the Power of Positive Thinking

The title of the text, Ways to Make Sunshine, alludes to Ryan’s ability to make positivity out of challenging situations: making “sunshine” out of a rainy day. Part of how she does this is through imaginative storytelling, which acts as an important motif in the text and illustrates Ryan’s leadership capabilities.

An important scene that illustrates this motif is when Ryan and her friends, Amanda and Zoe, are disappointed to learn that they will not be able to attend the Rose Festival Parade because of the rain. When Ryan complains about this change of plans to her mother, she responds, exasperated: “Ryan, what do you want me to do? I can’t control the weather. You’ve got company–go play with them. The three of you should be able to come up with something” (144). This scolding inspires Ryan to lead her friends in finding another way to celebrate the spirit of the Rose Festival Parade.

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Ryan instructs her friends “If we can’t go to the parade, let’s have one here” (144) and begins preparations for their indoor parade. Ryan gathers the picnic food they were going to bring to the parade, and when her mother asks what she’s doing, Ryan responds: “Using our imaginations like you told us to” (145). The poor weather releases a creative drive within Ryan to make the best of a disappointing situation, and she and her friends create an imaginative indoor parade, even cutting out multi-colored suns from construction paper to “make some sunshine” (145). Ryan proves in this scene that she is solution-oriented, and that through the power of imagination and positive thinking she can make tangible changes in her life.

Ryan uses her imagination to others’ benefit. When she and her friends take turns pretending to be Rose Festival Princesses, Ryan imagines how she would embody the leadership role: “I’ll get to tell the mayor how we should start a program that feeds the hungry. How we should cook gourmet meals for them, food that’s healthy and so good, everyone will want to eat it. Not just starving people. Because everyone deserves to have something in their bellies other than not that hot soup and rock-hard bread” (150). This quote illustrates the kind of leader Ryan is: one that genuinely thinks about how she can use her power and privilege to tangibly improve the lives of those around her. The quote gives insight into how Ryan views the world from a lens of equity, in which everyone has equal access to what they need and want.

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At the end of this scene, Ryan and her friends have a dance party. As they dance, the rain stops, and the sun comes out. Ryan’s younger friend notices this and exclaims: “‘Look, it’s not raining anymore! Look what we did!’ She thinks we made the rain stop. At first I start to explain that we didn’t but instead of disagreeing with her, I just sing along to the next song and keep dancing” (151). Again, proving herself to be a good leader with a positive outlook, Ryan does not intervene and correct her friend, but rather encourages the belief that positive thinking can yield tangible results.

Silver Hair Pins & Tin Canister

The tin canister Ryan finds in her new room is a symbol of her positive outlook on life. Ryan struggles with the move to their new home, but the canister becomes a symbol of possibilities for Ryan. When she opens the canister, she finds that it contains small trinkets, such as seashells, a postcard addressed to no one, and three gold hairpins which look to have had a fourth originally. Ryan notes about the hairpins that they “are long and have a cluster of silver-tone flowers at the end. They are not everyday barrettes or hair clips. They look like something to wear on a special day, for a special reason” (33). The hairpins especially spark an interest in Ryan to discover who the canister belonged to, which shows Ryan’s curious outlook on life and desire to know and understand the stories behind things.

Not everyone shares Ryan’s enthusiasm for the canister. Her brother, Ray, believes the canister is at best a thing of junk and at worst haunted: “what if the person who lived here died and the people who cleaned out the house had no idea that it was even there?” (31). While others find the canister either uninteresting or perhaps even sinister, Ryan views the canister with intrigue and uses it as an opportunity to dream and create stories about its contents. This illustrates Ryan’s overall positive outlook on life, and her ability to “make sunshine” and view things as opportunities to learn.

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As Ryan looks through the canister, she invents “stories about the things we’ve found–fun stories that aren’t creepy or sad. I tell a story about the most beautiful bouquet of roses the woman received on her birthday. Maybe a big important birthday that marks a new decade of living” (34). Ryan finds happiness in the contents of the canister, and it inspires her to learn more about the identity of its owner, rather than discarding it as unimportant junk left behind. This shows that Ryan is someone who views everything with care, as worthy of consideration. While someone else might see the canister as nothing more than a piece of junk, Ryan can see the beauty contained in the quotidian items.

This curiosity and positive outlook ultimately do lead her to perhaps uncovering the mystery of the canister. Ryan meets an antiques vendor at the local Saturday Market, Ms. Laura, who has the fourth hairpin. Ryan inquiries about the pin, and her curiosity inspires Ms. Laura, who asks her mother about the history behind the pin. Ms. Laura arrives at Ryan’s house at the end of the text with a photograph of her mother, Beth Ann, and her mother’s friend, Gloria Mae as children. Both girls (Beth Ann is white, Gloria Mae is Black) wear the matching hairpins, and again Ryan invents a story about Gloria Mae offering her best friend a hairpin to keep her hair from falling in her face. Ryan believes that she has solved the mystery of the canister, which to her affirms the magic inherent in everyday life.