Recent Reads

Amon’s Adventure… I have seen Arnold Ytreeide’s Christmas books all over the place and actually own Jotham’s Journey and Tabitha’s Travels but haven’t read them yet. Sarah Mackenzie talked about the Easter version, Amon’s Adventure, and I knew I wanted to read it during the 28 days leading up to Easter (one chapter each morning). I loved it! This was a really powerful telling of the Easter story from a young person’s perspective and I think I’ll read it aloud to my children when my oldest is ten-ish. Highly recommend!

Dear Daughters… I was immediately interested in this book based on its subtitle: love letters to the next generation. This book will be your new spiritual mentor if you don't yet have one... or even if you do! Davis has some truly beautiful insight to share and I'll be returning to her words again even when my little ones have all grown up and left the nest.

Healing the Soul of a Woman… This is shockingly my first Joyce Meyer book. This was another of those healing books that had a lot of really great insight to offer me since I’ve already learned the steps for myself but that would just not have really given me what I needed if I were going to read only this one book. I wrote done a ton of really great quotes though and was very grateful to have it during this journey. There is an accompanying workbook for sale separately so it’s possible that having both would do the trick but since I’ve never looked through the workbook I just can’t say one way or the other.

Imagination Station#5: Showdown with the Shepherd… Still liking this series just fine

The Milly-Molly-MandyStorybook… Another The Good and the Beautiful book list read we enjoyed as a read-aloud this month. This is a really old-fashioned book we all got a kick out of. It was theoretically too long for my not-quite-three-year-old, but even C was excited about it and pretending to be named Milly or Mandy (Molly is already her big sister’s doll’s name) during a lot of pretend games. It was very episodic so I think it’s a really great read-aloud for a four or five-year-old, and apparently even a three-year-old can enjoy it! There ARE black-and-white illustrations, but they’re sparse. Also, this is silly, but Milly-Molly-Mandy calls her parents Muvver and Farver instead of Mother and Father and that made me a hair crazy. These stories are sweet-but-dull, not at all fast-moving, but they’re overall just fine.  

Snow and Rose… I am really not a big fan of the fantasy genre, books OR movies, but I can handle them if they’re fairy tales. Snow & Rose is an unfamiliar fairy tale for me, but the illustrations were gorgeous and the story was very well-written. I just don’t ever finish reading books I’m not into these days and told myself I didn’t have to read past page ten if I didn’t want to but I really wanted to keep reading and see what would happen next all the way to the end.

Winning the Heart of Your Child*… I really liked this book! I hadn’t heard of Mike Berry but now I’m a fan. This book offered clear and practical advice while also offering hope and kindness (don’t worry if you haven’t done this so far!), and there were sections geared towards both parents of teens and parents of little ones. I already knew about a third of the way into it that I would definitely be reading it again as my kids get closer to the teenage years.

*I received free copies of Dear Daughters and Winning the Heart of Your Child from the publishers in exchange for an honest review.