George Muller: The Children's Champion , Trail Blazers Series
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Good resource, unexceptional writing
I didn't grow up in a church that taught about heroes of the Christian faith. Fortunately, my mom encouraged me to read biographies about Eric Liddel, Amy Carmichael and David Livingstone, but that was about my only chance to learn about these men and women. That's why I was so excited about The Trail Blazers Series for kids, because of the many biographies available for Christian heroes throughout church history. I thought they would be a fun and helpful resource to use with my own daughters.
This biography of George Muller was okay and just okay. His life itself is fascinating and his passion for prayer, for trusting God to provide for every need, and his leadership in orphan care and missions are noble and amazing.
But with so many incredibly well-written books out there for kids now, it's important that the Christian books we give them be at least of equal literary value. They need to be engaging, interesting, descriptive, and powerfully written.
This book seemed less about the story and more about preaching moral lessons along the way. Some of the word-choices seemed poor and unhelpful---like telling on a few occasions how George Muller had engaged in "immorality." Of course kids shouldn't know more details than that, but even bringing it up seemed unnecessarily awkward.
The author also phrased her sentences awkwardly at times and the dialogue generally seemed forced and unnatural, more expository than actually conversational. People in books need to talk like real people. Perhaps an editor could have helped some of these issues, especially the fact that the author mis-names one of the characters in the book. She clearly talks about George Muller's daughter, but calls her by the mother's name. A mistake like that just makes this book harder to hand over to my children. It seems like I'm setting them up for confusion.
I want my kids to read quality literature and quality biographies, not just read books because they are about Christian themes. If my child was doing a research paper or project on George Muller, I'd have her use this book as a resource. But I wouldn't expect her to want to read it, to enjoy reading it, or to be inspired by the story of his life. That's unfortunate.
I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review and the opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade CommissionâÂÂs 16 CFR, Part 255 : âÂÂGuides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.âÂÂ
October 2, 2012
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