Sunday Snippet: Faith Finders… Good Reads for Kids and GiveAway…

Just this weekend a friend asked me about great Christian reads for their kids that they could relate to… And in my pile of Sunday Snippets I had just the book waiting to GiveAway… it is a brand new book from Day One Publications and part of the Faith Finders Series, and is indeed a book about realistic children living in this day and age!!! There is a lot more to this book than meets the eye…

Hood #3 enjoyed this book, it begins with an introduction to a young girl called Matty who has recently turned eleven… instant connection!!! The chapters are short and easy reading but there is a lot packed into this story. Matty suddenly discovers that she will be attending boarding school – not quite the plans she had for herself. She dreads the idea and fully intends to hate every second of it… But her plans are thwarted by a very friendly classmate Sandy, who takes her under her wing.

This is indeed an adventurous school story… all the typical ups and downs of life in a boarding schools for girls. Though I think the cover of this book is a little misleading!!! It claims that the book is a “school story” where Matty and her best friend find a secret tunnel undiscovered for hundreds of years, while playing hide and seek. This is true… briefly in the third last chapter they have this little adventure… but mostly this book is about the typical relationships that a young girl will find at school or in day to day interactions with her friends.

It is a great early teen read because lots of issues are raised, but endless details are not provided. The issues are raised as problems experienced by the girls in Matty’s class: One girl’s dad wants to remarry after the death of his first wife, one of the girls has a mean step-mother, Matty’s Mom has a difficult pregnancy and she fears losing her, one of the girls suffers from anorexia, and goes in search of her mum that left her with her dad when she was young… and the tale of a teen mum is added into the mix. So lots of issues raised and a great introduction to lots of topics to talk about… The girls have a lovely christian house-mistess Miss Grey, who gently helps them to deal with the issues as they arise.

This is definitely not just a “school story” about a couple of gals who discover some lost treasure!!! It is a fabulous quick read for a young lady and a great way to introduce problems that could well arise in their “social circle” and also provides great examples of how to react to your friends when they do open up and share their troubles… If my daughter were bit older I would happily have left her to it, but I am so glad we read this book together, it gave us a great opening to discuss issues that require tact and empathy to talk about and we were able to chat quite a lot about the issues introduced and a whole lot more that arose!!!

This GiveAway works in the usual way, comment before the end of this coming Sunday, 26 August 2012, and we will draw and publish the winners next week! I won’t respond to your comments as I do on our other posts because I don’t want to be included in our own giveaway.

As usual I have to thank CBD, our GiveAway book suppliers of more great books.

Our GiveAways are open to everyone: If you have won a GiveAway before never fear – enter away. If you live on the far side of the world – enter away. Postage takes forever from here but eventually it should get to you! Good luck and happy commenting!!!