In The Biggest Win, players from the 2018 Super Bowl championship team coach young athlete in winning the kingdom of God. The Biggest Win: Pro Football Players Tackle Faith by Joshua Cooley.  New Growth Press, 2018, 158 pages Reading Level: Teen, ages 12-15 Recommended for: ages 12-up The story of the Philadelphia Eagles, last year’s surprise Super Bowl Champions, is well told in Birds of Pray.  The Biggest Win goes in depth about how the players got there—not the surface story, but God’s story as told in the scriptures.  Key Phillies players, namely Carson Wentz, Nick Foles, Zack Ertz, Trey Burton, Jordan Hicks and Chris Maragos, form the cheering squad…

A sports reporter who was with the Eagles as their dream team came together tells the story of their amazing Super Bowl Win. Birds of Pray the Story of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Faith, Brotherhood, and Super Bowl Victory by Rob Maaddi.  Zondervan, 2018, 208 pages. Reading Level: Teen, ages 12-15 Recommended for: ages 14-up Last years’ Super Bowl matchup might be the sports story of the decade.  On one side, a powerhouse (and cordially hated) team favored to win by every office pool and Vegas bookie—namely the New England Patriots.   One the other, a hardscrabble team that had fought its way into the playoffs by sacrificing their star quarterback’s knee—behold…

Happy (cold, cold, cold) Monday! It’s currently 17° with a wind chill of 8, and it’s only going to get worse over the next few days. However, I’m thankful that we’re not facing the extreme cold that my friends in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan have coming their way. Can’t it be spring yet?It’s been f.o.r.e.v.e.r. since I last participated in It’s Monday!, and it’s time to get back on the old blogging horse. I actually didn’t read very much last week, as I pulled out my Fringe DVDs a couple weeks ago, and I’m completely hooked. However, the show is so much grosser than I remembered … I don’t recommend watching…

In How the Light Gets In, author Jolina Petersheim takes the biblical story of Ruth and Boaz and transplants it into a modern-day Mennonite community.From the highly acclaimed author of The Outcast and The Alliance comes an engrossing novel about marriage and motherhood, loss and moving on.When Ruth Neufeld’s husband and father-in-law are killed working for a relief organization overseas, she travels to Wisconsin with her young daughters and mother-in-law Mabel to bury her husband. She hopes the Mennonite community will be a quiet place to grieve and piece together next steps.Ruth and her family are welcomed by Elam, her husband’s cousin, who invites them to stay at his cranberry…

I came upon Rollins’ novels by accident and I am glad I did. I find his novels to be a good combination of cutting edge scientific research and intense suspense. This novel fits that description well. The cutting edge science is artificial intelligence. The suspense is nearly continuous as the world as we know it might be destroyed.Another aspect of Rollins’ novels I like is that it includes Christian overtones. The AI being created is named Eve. There is the theme of a created being being introduced to evil and mortality. There are secret religious societies and priests battling each other. There is the concept of witches and those wrongly…

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This morning, the American Library Association (ALA) announced its Youth Media Awards. The ALA also welcomed awards announcements for titles awarded by the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association and the Association of Jewish Libraries. It will include announcements from the American Indian Library Association on even years when those awards are traditionally awarded. The Redeemed Reader team all watched the awards announcements live this morning and had a hopping Slack channel chat going while we also frantically put books on hold at our respective libraries. We’re thrilled to report that all but one of our Newbery Buzz titles this year got some awards love, even though only one garnered Newbery attention.…