Mercedes Hutchens

Dear V.C. Andrews,

“It is so appropriate to call hope yellow, like the sun we seldom saw.”  When I first started reading your book Flowers in the Attic I tried to figure out what you meant.  I read this sentence “The morning came pale behind the heavy drawn draperies that shut out the yellow light of hope.”  Then that’s when it hit me, why you should color hope yellow because The Dresden Dolls hope to see the sun.  Believe me I wanted them to get out of that attic as badly as they did and be free again.

I have always thought that my parents were cruel, but they really aren’t.  I guess sometimes I just act a little like a brat.  OK, maybe a lot like a brat.  I have wondered if there are meaner parents than mine.  I know that there are much, much worse moms and dads than mine though.  Sometimes I just get so mad at them because I don’t get what I want.  Now I wonder what it is like to have evil parents and grandparents.  Reading your book put a real picture in my mind of what it was like.

I have never been thankful that I still have both of my parents.  My parents divorced when I was four years old.  I do not like to talk about that day at all!!  Whenever my family starts to talk about it, I always get a tear in the corner of my eye.  When I was reading the part where Chris, Cathy, Carrie, and Cory’s father died I was totally shocked.  I could not believe it.  I felt so bad for them.  I could never imagine not have a dad or a mom.  I think about the day that my parents got divorced, like how Cathy thinks about her dad, but we both didn’t like to talk about them with other people.  I guess I have never been thankful that I still have both of them.

After reading your books Flowers in the Attic, I have learned to be thankful for my parents, and I have learned to live with all of my losses and problems, unlike before.  I used to want to change my life.  Now I never want my life to change.  I have learned to love my life.

Sincerely,
Mercedes Hutchens