Blog

As a homeschooling veteran, I review middle-grade stories to help parents, librarians, and teachers choose good books.

Look for author news here too!

 

Giving thanks by Joy DeKok

Sometimes I want a new miracle – a diet that works even if I don’t work it, a cure for female hair loss, a cure for diabetes, and politicians who will do what they promise. I want God to show me what He’s been up to.

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MLK day: how am I helping the kids in the projects?

I went to a Martin Luther King commemoration yesterday. The speaker, an associate professor of architecture at Washington University, challenged us all. Bob Hansman, who is white, is an artist and activist who set up his art studio in the Clinton-Peabody Housing Project and challenges his students to work there with him.

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The goat story

We were surprised though that one of the goats had leaped out of the pen and came to greet us personally, like a dog. We went to find the other one, which was still bleating. Well, turns out he had his head stuck in the fence. He wasn’t in big trouble yet, but he wasn’t happy.

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What is Christian fiction?

One of my blog readers emailed me and asked me to define Christian fiction. “Is it a story that doesn’t go directly against any Biblical teaching? Does the story have to teach some Christian lesson? Is it simply a story without all of the gratuitous sex and violence of the natural world?”

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Rooms by James L. Rubart, a review

Micah Taylor’s a successful young software multimillionaire, driven by tragedy and abuse in his childhood. He’s got a great girlfriend, an 80-hour-a-week job, and opportunity to travel. But something is missing.

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Author Staci Stallings on the little girl who wanted two pieces of candy

She said, “I just feel so greedy wanting it all.” As if the Holy Spirit opened a lesson book, she went on, “It’s like the other day. I was at the store, and there was this little girl in front of me in line. She walked up with two pieces of candy. The cashier rang it up and said, ‘That’ll be $1.93.’ Unfortunately all this little girl had was $1.

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