This is a gift-quality journal/scrapbook that could be a person’s meaningful keepsake to add to a family history. It could also be a beginning writer’s source of prompts for personal-essay writing. It has a lovely cover and binding (lays open nearly flat) with tones of blue and white throughout, with a page-marker ribbon and light illustrations along the page perimeters while leaving plenty of room to write.

The questions address all the aspects of life and are a mix of left- and right-brain prompts -- that is, both documentary and memory/creativity. I’ve done a lot of personal “excavating” as preparation for writing, yet this journal has questions that sparked fresh interests and memories for me. ( )