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Book ReviewsThe Boxcar Children Graphic Novel
by Gertrude Chandler Warneradapted by Meika Hashimoto2026 / 176 pagesRating: GOOD/Great/Give The Boxcar Children first appeared back in 1924, about Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny, four…
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Book ReviewsThe Peleg Chronicles
This one sat on my shelf for months because a glance at the back had me dismiss it. The series was touting what it didn’t…
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Book ReviewsHelmer in the Dragon’s Tomb
by S.D. Smith 2025 / 243 pages Rating: GOOD/great/gift Helmer is a young rabbit who wants to farm the same land his family has been…
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Book ReviewsBritfield & the Lost Crown
by C.R Stewart 2019 / 383 pages Rating: GOOD Tom is a 12-year-old orphan living in Oliver Twist kind of conditions, though this story is…
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Adult fictionSincerely, Stoneheart
by Emily Wilson Hussem 2025 / 240 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift I can’t find my car keys! Can you relate to this panicked searching? If you don’t…
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Book ReviewsProject Artifact: the Spear
by Trey Bowling & Lori Fausak 2025 / 169 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift As the author confidently declared, “Project Artifact: the Spear is going to be the…
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Adult fictionEve’s Daughters
by Lynn Austin 1999 / 432 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This book was recommended to me by a good friend. I was a little skeptical (Christian women’s…
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Book ReviewsEric’s Greatest Race
The Inspiring True Story of Eric Liddell by Tim Challies 2025 / 128 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Eric Liddell is probably best known as the man who…
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Book ReviewsBad Badger
by Maryrose Wood 2024 / 184 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This was a wonderfully strange book that left me wondering where it was going to go next….
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Book ReviewsSleuth Family Robinson: fighting evil around the world
by Christopher P.N. Maselli 2025 / 160 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift The Robinsons are an undercover spy family working for the UK. When someone hacks the British…
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Book ReviewsPearl
by Sherri L. Smith and Christine Norrie 2024 / 144 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is a very different slice of World War II history. Amy is…
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Book ReviewsGolden Boys: the Winnipeg Falcons of 1920
by Paul Keery and Michael Wyatt 2021 / 58 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift This is a graphic novel account of how the 1920 Winnipeg Falcons had to…
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Book ReviewsBear goes sugaring
by Maxwell Eaton III 2020 / 32 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give A coat and toque-wearing bear is going to show us how to make maple syrup from…
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Book ReviewsThe Moon is Always Round
by Jonathan Gibson 2019 / 32 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This picture book is a beautiful catechism truth wrapped in a heartbreaking story of loss. Author Jonathan…
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Book ReviewsGuide to Dinosaurs
by the Institute of Creation Research 2014 / 120 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Hardly any other field of science has been so distorted by secular, unbiblical theories…
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Book ReviewsSir Ladybug (3 books)
by Corey R. Tabor 2022 / 68 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Pell is a roly-poly bug with a mission: he wants everyone to know just how important…
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Book ReviewsSurvival Scout: lost in the mountains
by Maxwell Eaton III 2023 / 144 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Scout and her big brother have gone on a four-day backpacking trip in the mountains, but…
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Book ReviewsFinding My Vocation
by William Boekestein 2024 / 154 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give William Boekestein wants to help young readers figure out how they can pick the right job, and…
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Book listsThe best of TOON Books for young readers (18)
TOON Books don’t have much in common with each other besides their younger target audience. As the story is told, the founding publisher, Françoise Mouly,…
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Adult fictionWhere the blue sky begins
by Katie Powner 2022 / 343 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give The back cover pitched this as, quirky dying woman meets confident cute guy. Hmmm…. I don’t know…
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Book ReviewsBaseball saved us
by Ken Mochizuki 1993 / 32 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is the story of a chapter of World War II that I didn’t know anything about…
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Book ReviewsWhat really happened to the dinosaurs?
by John Morris and Ken Ham 1990 / 32 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Some children, it seems, are born with a love for all things dinosaurs while…
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Book ReviewsBluffton
My summer with Buster Keaton by Matt Phelan 2013 / 240 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Before there were silent films, there was vaudeville. Pay your nickel and…
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Book ReviewsIn Aunt Lucy’s Kitchen
by Cynthia Rylant 1998 / 56 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Three nine-year-old cousins are staying with their Aunt Lucy, and wondering what sort of fun they can…
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Book ReviewsAnt Story
by Jay Hosler 2024 / 158 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift This is as fascinating and creepy a comic about ants as you’re likely to read. Ant Story…
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Book ReviewsBaby Monkey, Private Eye
by Brian Selznick 2018 / 192 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Baby Monkey investigates five separate cases, but the biggest mystery in each case is how he’s going…
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Adult biographiesThe Watchmaker’s Daughter
The true story of World War II heroine Corrie Ten Boom by Larry Loftis 2023 / 384 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Larry Loftis is an international bestselling…
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Book ReviewsBabble! And how punctuation saved it
by Caroline Adderson illustrated by Roman Muradov 2022 / 72 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give In the village of Babble no one knows what punctuation is which means…
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Book ReviewsThe Boxcar Children: Great Adventure
1. Journey on a Runaway Train 2. The Clue in the Papyrus Scroll 3. The Detour of Elephants 4. The Shackleton Sabotage 5. The Khipu…
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Book ReviewsThe Hyperinflation Devastation
by Connor Boyack 400 pages / 2019 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Remember those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books kids loved back in the 1980s? Readers would be brought…
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Book ReviewsGod’s Daring Dozen: A Minor Prophet Series
by John Brown and Brian Wright Illustrated by Lisa Flanagan 2021 / 40 pages each Christian Focus Publications Rating: GOOD/Great/Give I’ve never been a fan of…
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Book ReviewsSteve Jobs: Insanely Great
by Jessie Hartland 2015 / 216 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift What makes something a really good read? It can be the writing – some writers can turn…
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Book ReviewsKatie Luther: the Graphic Novel
Mother of the Reformation by Susan K. Leigh illustrated by Dave Hill 95 pages / 2016 Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift My daughter recently asked, “Why aren’t there more…
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Book ReviewsWise Up: 10-minute family devotions in Proverbs
by Marty Machowski 160 pages / 2016 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is a solid family devotional. Author Marty Machowski takes passages from Proverbs and makes them more…
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Book ReviewsLemon Bird Can Help!
by Paulina Ganucheau 2022 / 112 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Lemon Bird is a lemon who is also a bird, and if you think that’s odd, you…
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Book ReviewsSuper Pancake (3 books)
by Megan Wagner Lloyd illustrated by Abhi Alwar 2023 / 170 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Have you ever thought your breakfast could be heroic? If you have,…
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Book ReviewsPea, Bee, & Jay #1: stuck together (3 books)
by Brian “Smitty” Smith 2020 / 64 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift A bite-sized vegetable, a bug, and a bird wouldn’t seem the most likely of friends, but…
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Book ReviewsSir Badalot and the Cranky Danky Dragon
by Rachel Jankovic Illustrated by Forrest Dickison 32 pages / 2022 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give “Now this cranky danky dragon Liked to drink a dragon whine That he…
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Book ReviewsThe Unwanted: Stories of Syrian refugees
by Don Brown 2018 / 104 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift This is not a pleasant read because it lays out a tragedy for which there seems no…
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Book ReviewsTiananmen 1989: our shattered hopes
by Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, and Ameziane 2020 / 115 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift I asked my 13 year-old and her friend whether they’d heard about China’s…
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Book ReviewsFever year: the killer flu of 1918
by Don Brown 2019 / 96 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift In the Spring of 1918, even as the First World War was winding down, a more deadly…
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Book ReviewsThe Giver
by Lois Lowry 1993 / 208 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give The Giver is a book that is not specifically Christian, but has been studied in Christian schools…
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Book ReviewsDaughters of God: Finding our identity in Him
by Christina Feenstra 2022 / 198 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This workbook of six chapters is “a course to help young women find their value and self-worth…
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Adult fictionThe White Rose Resists: a novel of the German students who defied Hitler
by Amanda Barratt 2020 / 320 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give In Amanda Barratt’s novel The White Rose Resists, a candle is being lit in the midst of…
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Book ReviewsThe Murder of Abraham Lincoln
by Rick Geary 2005 / 80 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Author and illustrator Rick Geary has created a series of graphic novels about Victorian-era murders. While I…
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Book ReviewsHarriet Tubman: Fighter for Freedom! (2 books)
by James Buckley Jr. and Izeek Esidene 2020 / 94 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) was an American black woman born into slavery who escaped…
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Book ReviewsThe Always War
by Margaret Peterson Haddix 2011 / 197 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give When my 13-year-old got a gift certificate to the local bookstore, it was an excuse for…
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Adult biographiesThe Vow
by Kim and Krickitt Carpenter 2012 / 183 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is Exhibit #1 in why you should never judge a book by its movie….
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Book ReviewsRisk is Right: Better to lose your life than to waste it
by John Piper 2013 / 51 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give How often do you take risks? If you’re anything like me, it’s not often. I like to…
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Book ReviewsThe Secret Code
by Coen Hartman 1980 / 195 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Hank and Dick are two average teenagers who dive into the deep end of adventure and espionage….
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Adult fictionFather Brown and the Ten Commandments: Selected Mystery Stories
by G.K. Chesterton 2017 / 249 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give An heiress of a large fortune has fallen to her death, and suicide seems the obvious explanation….
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Adult fictionThe Battle for Seattle
by Douglas Bond 2016 / 303 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Even Canadians have probably heard of Paul Revere’s daring midnight ride to Lexington, Massachusetts…but have you heard…
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Book ReviewsThe Hobgoblins: a novel on John Bunyan
by Douglas Bond 2020 / 268 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give There are people who carry out such heinous acts and live such immoral lives that we’d think,…
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Book ReviewsPoppy & Sam and the mole mystery (3 books)
by Cathon 2019 / 42 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift A little girl Poppy and her talking panda friend Sam are either very tiny, or they live in…
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Book ReviewsThe Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Land
by Carol Isaacs 2020 / 208 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift For more than 2,000 years, Jews have lived in Baghdad and as late as the 1940s a…
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Book ReviewsAfterwards I Knew: stories from the First and Second World Wars
by Christine Farenhorst 2010, 208 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give When it comes to this author, I am not an objective reviewer – I love every story Christine…
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Book ReviewsWho’s on First?
by Bud Abbott and Lou Costello illustrated by John Martz 40 pages / 2013 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give If you’ve ever seen the ol’ Abbott and Costello “Who’s…
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Adult fictionLetters Along The Way, from a Senior Saint to a Junior Saint
by D.A. Carson & John Woodbridge 2022 / 373 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Christians have long had the chance, in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, to eavesdrop…
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Adult fictionSugar Birds
by Cheryl Grey Bostrom2021 / 328 Pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This page-turner takes place in the Pacific Northwest, a little north of Seattle, and tells the story of two girls…
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Adult biographiesMy Father’s Journey
by Harry Kleyn 2022, 411 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give A few years ago I was asked to teach a North American church history course at Covenant Canadian…
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Book ReviewsSnow Treasure
by Marie McSwigan 1942 / 196 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give In 1940, shortly after the Germans invaded Norway, a Norwegian freighter arrived in the US city of…
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Book ReviewsMedallion
by Dawn L. Watkins 1985 / 213 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This will be a fun one for Grade 4/5 boys. Young Trave plans to be king one…
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Book ReviewsSolomon Says: Directives for Young Men
by Mark Horne 148 pages / 2020 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give If you are not governed by God’s Word, which calls you, by the work of the Holy…
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Adult biographiesPrairie Lion: The Life & Times of Ted Byfield
by Jonathon Van Maren 2022 / 256 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give God works in history through people, some of whom have a particularly significant impact. In Canada,…
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Adult fictionEvening Star
by Sigmund Brouwer 2000 / 317 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Set on the 1870s American frontier, this might at first glance seem to be a Western. But…
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Book ReviewsCorrie ten Boom: the courageous woman and the secret room
by Laura Caputo-Wickham 2021 / 24 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give For such a short one, this picture book sure fits a lot inside. We meet Corrie ten…
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Book ReviewsContending for the Faith: the story of the Westminster Assembly
by William Boekestein and Joel R. Beeke 2022 / 40 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give I love the first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (“What…
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Adult fictionShane
by Jack Schaefer 1949 / 176 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Sometimes I reread children’s literature because I enjoy being captured again by the quality of writing and…
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Book ReviewsWe Hereby Refuse: Japanese American resistance to wartime incarceration
by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura 2021 / 160 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, tens of thousands of Americans of Japanese…
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Book ReviewsFinding Winnie
by Lindsay Mattick 56 pages / 2015 Rating: Good/GREAT/Give It turns out that Winnie the Pooh, a teddy bear who had fantastic and entirely fanciful…
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Book ReviewsEcho Island: the silence holds a secret
by Jared C. Wilson 251 pages / 2020 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give After celebrating their high school graduation with one last group camping trip, four friends return home…
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Book ReviewsManga Classics: Anne of Green Gables
by L.M. Montgomery adapted by Crystal S. Chan 308 pages / 2020 Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Anne is an orphan girl living in the Prince Edward Island of…
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Book ReviewsNicky & Vera: a Quiet Hero of the Holocaust…
by Peter Sís 2021 / 64 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Nicholas Winston never set out to be a hero but he also knew what needed to be…
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Book ReviewsBell Mountain
by Lee Duigon 267 pages / 2010 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Jack and Ellayne are two children on a mission from God: they are going to ring the…
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Adult biographiesOut of the depths
An Unforgettable WWII Story of Survival, Courage, and the Sinking of the USS Indianapolis 208 pages / 2016 by Edgar Harrel, USMC Rating: GOOD/Great/Give In 1944…
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Adult fictionChasing Shadows
432 pages / 2021 by Lynn Austin Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Chasing Shadows takes place in WWII Holland and is a novel about choices and consequences. Miriam, a…
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Adult biographiesDancing Under the Red Star
by Karl Tobien 368 pages / 2006 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is American Margaret Werner’s perspective on the USSR’s forced labor camps – the Gulag – that…
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Book ReviewsThe Phantom Tollbooth
by Norton Juster 1961 / 255 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give What kind of book is suitable for study in the Fifth Grade, and in First-Year university English…
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Apologetics 101Surviving Religion 101: Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College
by Michael J. Kruger 2021 / 262 pages. Rating: GOOD/Great/Give From time to time I search online for “ex-Can RC.” I’m curious as to why people would…
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Book ReviewsAnansi and the Moss-Covered Rock
by Eric A. Kimmel 32 pages / 1988 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Things begin with Anansi (uh·naan·see) the spider making quite the discovery: a strange moss-covered rock that…
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Adult biographiesCome Back, Barbara
by C. John Miller & Barbara Miller Juliani 182 pages / 1997 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is the true story of a prodigal that came back. Barbara Miller,…
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Adult biographiesRadiant: Fifty remarkable women in Church history
by Richard M. Hannula 330 pages / 2015 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give I found this book very interesting and met a lot of fascinating women. Professor Eta Linnemann…
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Book ReviewsGutsy Girls Book Two: Sisters, Corrie & Betsie ten Boom
by Amy L. Sullivan 2016 / 36 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is the true story of two Dutch sisters who knew that God could be trusted…
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Book ReviewsOwly: The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer (5 books)
by Andy Runton 2004 / 160 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift This is two stories in one, and at about 80 pages each, they have room for some…
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Adult biographiesJohn MacArthur: Servant of the Word and Flock
by Iain H. Murray 240 pages / 2011 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001 John MacArthur has been a help and a…
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Book ReviewsThe Bug Zapper: The Ant Arrives! (2 books)
by Tom Eaton 2018 / 108 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift Bug Zapper is a superhero that fights a bevy of bug-themed villains like Mean Mosquito, Butterfly Bob,…
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Book ReviewsGod’s Story: A Student’s Guide to Church History
by Brian Cosby 144 pages / 2014 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This small book is an introduction to Church history written for students at the high school level….
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Book ReviewsIt goes without saying: Peanuts at its silent best
by Charles Schultz 2005 / 160 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift There seems something almost wrong with using a multitude of words to recommend a wordless book so…
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Book ReviewsFreiheit! The White Rose graphic novel
by Andrea Grosso Ciponte 110 pages / 2020 Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift I grew up reading stories about the Dutch resistance during World War II, and it was…
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Adult biographiesSaint Patrick
by Jonathan Rogers 2010 / 132 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give While legends about St. Patrick (385-461) abound, facts about this Irish saint are hard to come by….
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Adult biographiesWinston Churchill
by John Perry 158 pages / 2010 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Though the man himself has been gone 50 + years now, the myth is enjoying a revival….
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Book ReviewsFinding Narnia: the Story of C. S. Lewis and His Brother
by Caroline McAlister 48 pages / 2019 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give C.S. Lewis wrote, “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good…
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Book ReviewsThe Plot to Kill Hitler: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Unlikely Hero
by Patricia McCormick 184 pages / 2016 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the youngest son in a large, loving, and intellectual family. When he, at a…
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Adult fictionChasing Fireflies
by Charles Martin 340 pages / 2007 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This is part murder mystery, part adoption story (times two), and part…well, superhero epic. The murder mystery…
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Book ReviewsHenry says good-bye
When you are sad by Jocelyn Flenders edited by Edward T. Welch 32 pages / 2019 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give This book is part of an excellent series…
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Book ReviewsGood Pictures Bad Pictures Jr.
by Kirsten A. Jenson 2017 / 40 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Talking with our kids about pornography on the Internet is not a conversation any parent wants…
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Book ReviewsGod made me unique
Helping children see value in every person by Joni Eareckson Tada and friends 32 pages / 2019 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give Everyone is unique, but some of us…
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Adult fictionHidden: Stories of War and Peace
by Christine Farenhorst 303 pages / 2020 Rating: GOOD/Great/Give “I was a Stranger” is reason enough to pick up Christine Farenhorst’s newest short story collection. The…
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Book ReviewsSnow White
by Matt Phelan 216 pages / 2016 Rating: GOOD/Great/Gift This is Snow White inventively reimagined as a 1920s Depression-era American tale. The “king” is a stock…
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Adult fictionDirected Verdict
by Randy Singer 2002 / 486 pages Rating: GOOD/Great/Give There are lots of layers in this intense courtroom drama. When the Saudi religious police uncover a…