Showing posts with label Christian books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian books. Show all posts

Thursday, August 23, 2007

What are your kids reading?

Right now, Jillian, our 13 year old, is reading Dragonspell. She has already read the whole series once and is reading it for the second time. I think she's on the third book right now.

Here's a description of this book:

After 14 years as a slave girl in the village of River Away, Kale is free, because of a dragon's egg. Since she found it, the village elders have decided that she must present herself and the egg to the great wizards of the walled city of Vendela, where she expects to become a servant of Paladin, the earthly representative of Wulder, supreme being of Amara. Her journey is interrupted first by attacking ogres, then by a detour into a cave that hides seven more dragon eggs, and finally by a daring escape aided by dragon-riding rescuers who become Kale's guides, tutors, and closest cohorts on her travels. Two of her precious eggs hatch on the way and become her constant companions–first green Gymn, who heals, and then purple Metta, who sings. To them, Kale is much more than just a slave girl–she is the last of the great Allerion dragon-keepers. This is classic quest fantasy with echoes of J. R. R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy (Houghton) and of Christopher Paolini's Eragon (Knopf, 2003). As in C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" books (HarperCollins), Christian allegories and messages are clearly presented and easily found, but it is equally possible to read this as Kale's story as it happened in Amara, a world completely separate from our own. It would be a shame to limit readership by relegating this clever and inventive story to the genre of Christian fiction. There is plenty of room for sequels, and readers will want to know much more about Kale and the remainder of her quest.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Story Books for Toddlers

Our Sunday School is always looking for ideas on how to keep little ones quiet during church services... so I'm passing on this idea to them.

They have quite a few old story books with pictures in them of Biblical characters. The kids never seem to read them any more and some of them are very old with ripped covers and torn pages. I'm suggesting that they let the kids cut the characters out of the books and then use a glue stick to put those pictures into a notebook of some sort, possibly using a Composition Notebook. Then the name of the Biblical character could be written under the picture. As they are putting them into the book, the teacher could talk about each character so that the child knows who it is....

For example, if the child put a picture of Noah in his book, the teacher could talk about the big flood and could even help the child draw water and an ark around Noah.

The child could sit in church and go through the pages, looking at all the pictures and remembering the story of each character!

I saw a great website that teaches ELS to kids in Japan and she was looking for craft ideas for the kids using simple English. I think this would be a great craft for her to do with them, using any type of magazine or book. She could have the kids cut out pictures of common items, such as pets, or jobs, and then they could write in English, a description of the picture. Kids love looking through books, especially one they made!

Bev