A work in progress.The Lord has been challenging my reading skills and assumptions lately, both humbling and teaching me in the process. I had offered to teach a Sunday School class of two-year-olds, and keeping their interest isn’t easy. I had also been asked to read to the littles in our homeschool group once a week just before lunch time, and it was a disaster. I was reading delightful books, sitting in front of my audience and holding up the book, traditional librarian style, and losing half my audience. My 2yo son was the most active, wandering and disrupting my efforts with noisy vehicles. (After all, he had me and…

A beautiful, artistic representation of the story of Easter using rocks set against a black backdrop. Starred review for He is Risen. *He is Risen: Rocks Tell the Story of Easter by Patti Rokus. Zondervan, 2019. 32 pages. Reading Level: Picture books, ages 4-8 Recommended For: All ages as a read aloud Most children are fascinated by rocks. Rock painting, rock collecting, rock “pictures”–it’s hard to go for a walk with a child in a rocky place without suddenly noticing all the rocks! Patti Rokus exhibits a similarly enchanted view of rocks in He is Risen, using rocks to capture scenes from Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. Each spread is…

a scene near the home in which Hayley is tutoring children in FranceThe Race that Knows Joseph -Or, Meeting Kindred Spirits Abroad and Other Book Thoughts  “Have you read Lucy Maud Montgomery?”  It was my first day in France and my travel-numbed brain took a moment to place even that familiar name. “Oh yes!”  I exclaimed, after a moment of foggy thought.  Beth, my new friend from Ireland, turned from the medieval street we were walking up. “Ohhhhh, what’s your favorite book?  Have you read the Emily series?”   Soon we were discussing our favorites and Emily versus Anne.  She’s read The Storygirl. I haven’t finished it. She loves Blue…

A coloring Bible may make a lovely gift for the right recipient, but is it the best choice for reading and studying? The appearance of “coloring Bibles” like NIV Beautiful Word and NLT Inspire was a natural followup to the popularity of adult coloring books.  Where the grownups go, kids eventually follow, as we discovered last year with the NIV Wonders of Creation coloring Bible for kids. Some new editions this year feature both coloring and journaling for the preteen and tweener set.  It’s fine to capitalizing on a trend (it’s the American way!) and coloring Bibles can make nice gifts, but before you buy (or ask), here are a…

Eventown is a place of forgetting, but how much forgetting does that take before you forget yourself? Eventown by Corey Ann Haydn.  HarperCollins, 2019, 326 pages Reading Level: Middle grades, ages 10-12 Recommended for: ages 10-14 Naomi and Elodee Lively are identical twins—on the outside.  Inside they’re very different: Naomi loves order, regularity, and gymnastics, while Elodee is a wildly experimental cook and loudmouth.  All their friends in their drab hometown of Juniper have agreed the family needs “a fresh start”—after what?  We don’t know, but something has happened to their family that changed everything for them, and neither Naomi or Elodee, or their mom or dad, knows how to…

Identical twins struggle to re-define themselves in The Lost Girl, a fantasy for middle-grade readers. The Lost Girl by Anne Ursu. HarperCollins (Walden Pond), 2019, 355 pages. Reading Level: middle grades, ages 10-12 Recommended for: ages 10-14 “The two sisters were alike in every way, except for all the ways they were different.”  Iris was the factual, practical one; Lark the dreamer.  Lark was also the precarious preemie who almost didn’t make it out of the hospital–twice.  Iris has always felt a responsibility to take care of her more fragile twin, and that’s why the news that they won’t be in the same class for fifth grade is devastating to…