Book Description
The Big Dreams, Big Prayers Bible for Kids, NIV includes the complete New International Version (NIV) of the Bible along with devotions, prayers, and highlighted verses to help kids pray and listen for God’s answers to their prayers.

My Review: 4 Stars. The beginning has a page for someone to write To and From, which is a nice touch. The book gives a definition for prayer. The preface gives a brief history on the NIV version of the bible. Throughout the book, the sections titled Big Dreams, Big Prayers highlight certain sections and help guide the children through a devotion of their own.  Each book starts with some questions to help the child learn more about the bible, such as who write this book, and other important facts. At the end, there is a section for the child to write down their prayers, and then what God’s answer was.  Overall, a nice layout for the targeted age of 8-12.
 
I received this book for free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers <http://booklookbloggers.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review and the opinions and thoughts I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255

 
 About the Book: A nuclear fallout brings refugees into a small town, and the characters calmly give them food and shelter, apparently.

MY REVIEW: 2 stars. I was very excited to receive this book because it seemed to be exactly my kind of story! I was pleased upon receiving it and looking at the cover. Unlike other books I have received recently, it seemed to be published by a company and to look professional.  So, great job on the cover.  Upon reading it, I did see some editing errors, which irked me, but I know how easily that can slip through even when the book goes through several editing phases.  The reason for the 2 star review (I didn’t hate it, just couldn’t get into it enough to even finish reading it) is because there was way too much telling and not enough showing. It was narration and little dialogue. The plot was a great plot and could’ve been written in an exciting, gripping way, but instead was dry and boring. Like I said, telling instead of showing. It almost read like a nonfiction book. If you want to know about nuclear fallout, then great. But if you want an exciting story, which I did, then not so great. It just fell a bit flat and missed the mark to me.
 
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Doodletopia: Cartoons
About the book: An interactive doodle book from a best-selling art instruction author and cartoon master that pairs illustrating insights with drawing, designing, and coloring activities for aspiring artists.

Welcome to Doodletopia! Your first stop in this paradise of creativity? The world of cartoons. Your tour guide Christopher Hart is ready to introduce you to the interactive, artistic possibilities of creating your own exciting, hilarious, off-the-wall cartoon characters, gags, and more.

Unlike other doodle books that leave you stranded, with no help at all, Doodletopia: Cartoons pairs fun doodle-based activities with the sort of insightful (and laugh-out-loud funny) advice and tips that countless readers have come to expect from cartooning master Christopher Hart. For the first time ever, you can pick up your pencils, pens, markers, or crayons, and draw, doodle, or color right on the same page as the author.

From finishing cartoon faces to selecting costumes to completing wacky cartoon scenes,
the opportunities for creative expression are endless. So what are you waiting for? Open up
and start doodling!
 
MY REVIEW: I got this for my 10 year old son, who has been enjoying watching videos and drawing the cartoons from voice instructions.  I don’t know if this is a little above his level or if he just prefers hearing instructions, but this has proven a little harder for him to follow than the videos he is used to.  I think it’s a wonderful book, though, and I recommend it for anyone who has an interest in drawing and would like a step-by-step instruction to help them get started.
 
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

 

MY REVIEW AND THOUGHTS: I’m going to give this book a 4 star rating.

THE GOOD PARTS: I liked the author’s description of 90’s evangelicalism, and the way it seemed he was disillusioned about the process. The “repeat after me” altar calls, the colored bracelets. “Walking people through” the steps on how to get saved, as if it were a recipe. I have had the same disillusionments myself. I have seen church numbers grow on paper due to this kind of outreach and preaching, but it all seems so surface and fake. The growth doesn’t happen. The internal change isn’t there. There is something wrong about this. I’m glad that this author is challenging these things.  I was also pleased by the voice used throughout.  The author did not come across as “in your face” or pushy. He didn’t come across as having all the answers and telling everyone else that they were wrong.  He simply shared his thoughts and feelings in an almost conversational tone, leaving the reader free to either agree or disagree without feeling defensive.  This is an art that I wish more people could master.

THE PARTS THAT BOTHERED ME: To most it’s a small thing, but as a mental health professional, I am bothered when people throw out real diagnoses to describe normal everyday occurrences.  In this book the author uses the term schizophrenic to explain something (that actually sounded more in line with the definition of bipolar, but that’s not my point here) and he used the term ADHD in his acknowledgements to describe his writing style.  When this occurs, it minimizes the very real problems that people actually living with such diagnoses have, and makes the disorders that much harder for people to understand. Part of my passion is educating about mental health issues, and it’s the casual use of terms such as this that does so much harm, even when that was not the intent.  I winced at every casual use of terms such as these, and it did take away from my enjoyment of what the message of the book is really about.

This book will be donated to a Free Little Library in my local area.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Country Boy and City Bumpkin
 
Although I emigrated from Chicago to St. Louis, Missouri, a long time ago, I have never been anywhere near the small town of Ellsinore, Missouri, the birthplace of the late Albert Ray Morlen, barber extraordinaire. Al cut my hair in his St. Louis shop for at least 30 of the 47 years he did business there. He may not have been Andy Griffith but he was close to a clone and no one marketed the glory of his small hometown better than Al. And he did very well promoting belief in Jesus Christ as well.
 
His family had owned the only grocery store in Ellsinore back in the Forties and Fifties. He came to St. Louis looking for work. Finding none, he went to barber school and never looked back. He was a tonsorial artist unrecognized as such by most of his customers who were blue-collar men wanting little more than a trim or a crewcut plus an update on neighborhood news. Al not only gave them what they wanted but often a more liberal education as well. His specialty was theology. 
 
Al was a country boy and a Baptist and I was a city bumpkin and a Roman Catholic but we got along famously over all those years. If no one else were in the shop, we would discuss the differences in our two faith traditions. Al never flirted with Catholicism or I with his Baptist faith but when I first went to him he was convinced Mormons and Catholics were nothing more than cults and he didn’t hesitate to say that. After all, souls were at stake. Mine in particular unless I saw the light that he turned on every time I got a haircut. 
 
But after many years cutting my hair, and many long discussions, he one day told me he had changed his mind. Only the Mormons qualified as a cult. He had been wrong about the Catholics but he was still not too fond of all those statues. And since most of his customers were Catholic, he often had to attend funerals and still could not understand what was up with all that standing and kneeling. He never knew what was coming next. 
 
I could understand his problem since I had a attended a Baptist wedding once and we sat for the entire service. Big difference in the mechanics as well as the substance of the two faiths and not easy to explain, one to another.
 
It may have been on the same day that Al told me Catholics were not a cult that he also told me I was “saved,” whether I knew that or not. I knew this was no small thing coming from a Baptist, never mind one as solid as Al in his faith.
 
I had spent 19 consecutive years in Roman Catholic schools in Chicago without ever being told I was “saved,” a concept not accepted in Catholicism in the Protestant sense.  But then I had never been tempted to be a priest, either. So when Al told me I was “saved” and just too dumb to know it, I took that announcement as a Medal of Honor whether I could wear it or not. 
 
I demurred vociferously, of course, and said I was always in the process of being “saved” and hoped I would never fall off that path. I had a history of many tumbles in my time. 
 
I tried to explain the Sacrament of Penance to him and its biblical roots but that did not go over well. Nor did Purgatory and Martin Luther’s throwing the Book of Maccabees out of the Bible in the 16th century because of its allusion to Purgatory. But it was the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist as discussed in John 6: 41-59 that may have made some impression on him. Nevertheless, he remained steadfast in his appreciation of the grape juice and crackers used at his monthly Baptist communion service. 
 
I told Al, however, that despite canards to the contrary, Catholics believe that the grace of God alone can save someone and that “works” are not the deciding factor in salvation as some non-Catholics might have you believe. 
 
I added, of course, a reference to 2 James: 14-18 as the proof text which says “faith without works is dead” and told him Catholics believe that as well. Without works, faith is moribund, for all intents and purposes, but Catholics in no way believe works will get you to heaven. Works of mercy are what you do if you do believe, and you believe as a result of the gift of faith that comes freely from God. You can’t earn faith or heaven from the Catholic perspective but dying in serious or mortal sin can help you go to hell. Al didn’t agree with that. 
 
Al regularly invoked his belief that faith alone guarantees salvation, that when one accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior he or she went to heaven at death. No pit stop in the car wash of Purgatory. He did not buy into the idea of dying with mortal sin on one’s soul as a means of finding hell as one’s eternal destination. 
 
As a result, I used to remind him on occasion of a notorious adulterer in his home town shot to death by an angry husband. Al would always tell me that if the dead man had accepted Christ, he went to heaven and he thought legendary Cozy must have done that somewhere along the line. Maybe so, I said, but if he were a Catholic he’d have a lot of explaining to do, and we would leave it at that.
 
I never accepted Al’s offer to visit Ellsinore simply because I don’t like to “travel.” He told me I’d be welcome down there as a visitor and would love the catfish and barbecue but as a Catholic I might want to get out of town before dark. 
 
In a sense he was joking, of course, but in another sense maybe not so much. Solid fundamentalists, whether in southern Missouri or elsewhere in the United States, often have a deep-seated suspicion of papists whom they view as souls needing to be saved. In contrast, Catholics I know harbor no great animus toward Fundamentalists with whom we share similar positions on abortion, euthanasia and other issues in our society today. We disagree on many things but on core issues there is great similarity whether either group admits that or not. 
 
I used to read Al's hometown paper in his shop while waiting for a haircut and I had come to love from afar the people in that area. I would rejoice when I saw the rare obit in which the deceased “was of the Catholic faith.” I would circle that fact and give it to Al as part of my gratuity on the way out if only to prove we papists had infiltrated his part of the woods.
 
I also admired a senior columnist in the paper who at times not only voiced suspicions of cults (her readers knew who the cults were even if Al had pardoned one of them) but she also had serious questions about other Protestant denominations. She was a member of the Church of Christ. 
 
I told Al that as a good Baptist he might not pass muster with the columnist or perhaps the Church of Christ. I later learned this denomination had split in two and neither of the two, as I understand it, accepts the theology of the other. Martin Luther’s 16th century earthquake still has tremors today with reputedly more than 23,000 sects or ecclesial communities already established and more being born as disagreements in doctrine occur. 
 
I was often tempted to send the columnist a letter indicating that as a traditional Catholic who reads her column every week, I felt obliged to tell her we papists are Christian and believe that Christ is our Lord and Savior and anything she may have heard to the contrary is buncombe and balderdash. I never sent that letter. I didn’t think that kind of thing would be helpful in bridging the gap.
 
Al Morlen was truly one of a kind. Every time I go elsewhere for a haircut now I think of him. I have met a lot of people cut from rare cloth in Chicago and St. Louis but no one like Al Morlen, a Christian first and a barber second. 
 
The man had to emigrate from his beloved Ellsinore, Missouri, to earn a living and he did that successfully. He reminded me of my parents who had emigrated from Ireland, circa 1920, to earn a living as well. They too succeeded, making it possible for the likes of me to pick up a couple of degrees coming out of a neighborhood where few went on to college. And like Al making the long hike from Ellsinore, my parents brought their faith with them.
 
 
Donal Mahoney
 
 
 
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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis Missouri. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/ and some of his newer work at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.gpbT6XZy.dpbs