Book of the Week

Does anyone even read these ones? Oh well, I love blogging about favourite book, I can be quite evangelical about good books, because I love sharing a good thing. One of my visiting teachers once said that she needed to start bringing a notebook with her so that she could write down the titles I mentioned to her. Here's the titles for this week, whether you check them out or not.

Inspiring Heroics:
Oddly enough, I don't have my own copy of the book "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom. What's odd about it is how much I love this one-I read it every year or so, and I've really broken my old habit of rereading the same few titles ad nausem. Some books are worth reading over and over again, and this is one of them. "The Hiding Place" is the true story of a Dutch family who out of concience develop a resistance network to hide their Jewish countrymen during the Nazi occupation in WWII. This is not your typical survival, resistance story that you can find for a dime a dozen concerning this dark part of history. The occurences of their story are all too common, and many brave souls lived it: hide Jews at great personal risk, followed by betrayal and incarceration. What makes the ten Boom's story so special is their faith. Despite the hardships they endure, they continue to live the gospel joyfully. Miracles abound admist the horrors of the prison camp. The one sister Betsie, admist the privations sees it as a wonderful oppurtunity to teach their fellow inmates of Christ. She dreamed of teaching their lessons of applying Christ's teaching to their situation to others after the war. As she so eloquently put it "We can show them that there is no hole that He cannot rescue us, no horror so dark that He cannot save us. People will believe us, because we were here."

Rhyme Thyme:
I'm a sucker for stories with a rhythmic text. The lilt and beat of ti really appeal to kids, plus they're fun to read, especailly for hose tikes who one time through is never enough. "Jamberry" by Bruce Degan is one such book. It's an exuberant little tale, of a bear and a boy joyfully romping through a delighful world of berries. My boys just adore this one,they can recite it at the drop of a hat, and it's definently in the Thompson Family top picks for picturebooks. I just wish that I could find art prints of the illustrations of this one to hang on the walls (the blackberry express is my favourite). Lots of berry delight awaits!

"One berry, two berry pick me a blueberry,
Hatberry, shoe berry, in my canoeberry."