Lots of Helpers

Egg Animals

August 17, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

A few days ago, we watched a short YouTube video about making kawaii egg animals. This really fired up Mr. Imagination’s imagination! He badly wanted to make some, so the next morning he asked me if he could make breakfast. Mr. Sweetie already had breakfast started, but I let Mr. Imagination boil some eggs to try it out. He had some trouble getting them boiled hard enough; I think I goofed up on the timing somehow. Eventually we ended up with three eggs in good enough shape to make animals from. (The rest got eaten by hungry boys!). These didn’t turn out as cute as the ones we saw on YouTube, but my little people sure loved them. Mr. Sweetie helped make them and take the pictures.

This is a mouse.

This is a dragon.

Left to right: dragon, rabbit, mouse.

I have a feeling he’ll be attempting this again sometime! And, this ticked the “art” box for the day—if I had such a thing on our schedule!

Snow in the Grey Valley!

August 10, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We rarely ever see snow on the ground. When we lived in Cheviot, I believe we saw it four times in eight years. Here, we live in a river valley, at a very low elevation. We sometimes see snow on the mountains around us, but it’s been 10-15 years since our village had it on the ground. So, we were quite surprised, Sunday at lunchtime, to see this out the window:

The children were thrilled!

The huge flakes came faster and faster!

When we got home, there was snow on everything.

The boys immediately started building snowmen.

This will be one of my favorite pictures from this year! Left to right are Mr. Diligence, Simon, Mr. Imagination, Mr. Intellectual, and Mr. Sweetie.

The next morning, there was still a lot of snow around. Simon and Esther went to work, and Simon took this picture from the car.

I took these pictures from our living room window.

By Monday evening, the snow was gone, except for the snowmen, who stayed a little longer. Now they are just memories!

Last Part of July 2019

August 3, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Here are the rest of my pictures from July. This month went by crazily fast! And, now that we’re in August, we’re very close to meeting the newest member of our family—hopefully, in about three more weeks.

Esther achieved a major goal in July—she passed the test for her full license! Now, she can take passengers with her. She also bought a car, a Honda Accord, which she’s quite happy with.

Mr. Intellectual finished this cup, made from four different types of wood. With all the glue that went into it, we advised him not to drink from it, so he’s using it for a pencil cup.

Another of Mr. Diligence’s pictures of big trucks! He saw this load of sheets of steel going past one day.

I asked the boys to recover the frame I used for starting seeds last year with new plastic. They decided to scrap it and build me a new one, twice the size, to better utilize the sheet of plastic they had available! It is now finished and waiting for baby plants.

Last weekend, Gayle and the younger boys dug the last of our potato crop. Mr. Imagination was delighted to find this enormous one, and brought it in to show me. See the weight?

Little Miss played with the potatoes in her own way. That big one is her; she’s the mother, sitting on stones, and her babies are on top of her. The other stack, just on the other side of her, is more of her children, also sitting on rocks.

We had nearly a bushel of potatoes that needed used quickly, so we cut a lot up Saturday night for Sunday dinner. They needed a lot of trimming, between stabs from the fork and the wireworms that our garden is infested with.

6-IMG_5886

Grandma asked what Mr. Imagination has been building from legos. He took this picture for her, of his fire ship. See all the nozzles for spraying water?

Product Review—Early 19th Century American History

August 2, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our normal school days have very little variety. We do math and language arts and Bible lessons, and read stories set in historical times, trying to get a grasp on what happened back then. When the chance came along to review a product from Home School In the Woods, I decided it would be good for all of us to do something different, so I requested The Early 19th Century from their Time Travelers U. S. History Studies line. I knew the school holidays were coming up, and while we don’t normally take any time off, a friend was coming to stay a week with the boys, so I thought we’d take time off our regular school and do this course during that time. Since it took longer than that to do the course, we just cut out other things from our normal days for a few weeks and spent a lot of time doing this.

When I received The Early 19th Century, it took a little while to figure out how to use it. There were so many different folders and PDF files I was confused! Finally, I figured out that the first step was to print the text and project PDF for a lesson, and then I would be able to figure out which masters we needed for the particular lesson. That made it much easier! I just printed, each evening, what we needed for the next day. The instructions for the projects are simple and easy to follow. Each morning when we did a lesson, I read the text aloud while the children started coloring and cutting out the day’s projects. We aimed to spend an hour a day on this course, although it often ended up being an hour and a half. This shows us, the night before we started, sorting pages out and getting ready to start.

The course is laid out in 25 daily lessons. Every 5^th lessson is a catch-up day, where you simply finish the projects for the week. Day 23 is another of those, and Day 24 is when you assemble a lot of the things you did into a lap-book. We did that yesterday. On Day 25, you are supposed to have a Chuck Wagon Dinner, and invite grandparents or friends to show off what you learned—we probably won’t do anything for that. We did most of the projects, although there were a few for which I couldn’t easily find the needed materials, so we just skipped them. Each of the catch-up days includes a few recipes for foods that would have been eaten in the first half of the 19^th Century. I’m keeping those in mind for possible future use.

Here we are, during the first lesson, figuring out what we’re doing.

A wide range of subjects were covered in this course. Some were fairly common topics, such as the war between Texas and Mexico, which included the Alamo, or the Erie Canal, and some were things I knew very little about—like the Tripolitan War with the Barbary Pirates. One lesson was devoted to learning about the presidents who held office during the early 1800s, and another briefly covered a number of other famous people from that era. One lesson talked about the mountain men, there were two lessons about the pioneers, and one talked about the gold prospectors. The last lesson talks about slavery in America up to 1850.

Every lesson has copywork, which is sentences from McGuffey’s reader. We didn’t do this, since the boys all have penmanship practice in their language arts books. Almost every day, we also put some pictures on our timeline. Throughout the course we added to a songbook of early American songs. Some were ones we read about in the Little House books, so it was fun to hear them (I looked the songs up on YouTube and we listened to them; if the words weren’t clear, I read the songs aloud.)

A lot of the projects are simply cutting out mini-books and pasting them together; of course, we read the text blocks together. I liked the ones where they had to write something about the topic, but the boys didn’t! We each put together a timeline of American history from 1790-1850, and made a map with different layers to show the growth of the United States from 1800-1850. That was fun; I’ve always liked the maps like that in the encyclopedia, and now we know how we can make them ourselves. We didn’t quite get this project finished; we may come back and do it yet. There were also a few projects like pretending to pan for gold or make a Mexican serape, which we didn’t do. Here is Little Miss’s version of the quilt pattern we colored in.

This project was fun. They each wrote several sentences about the mountain man/explorer inside the minibook, and then added something to the picture to make it 3-dimensional. The suggestion for Jedidiah Smith was to glue fur on, but we didn’t have any—so I grabbed the clippers and cut Mr. Sweetie’s hair!

By far the favorite project was the jumping jack. This was based on toys that early Americans would have made, and everyone had great fun putting theirs together and playing with it! The model log cabins were fun, too. The hardest project we did was a “Daguerrotype Photo Album.” It took us a week just to do that one project! The instructions said to print the pictures for it on ivory paper, but we didn’t have any, so we printed them on white paper. Then, we brewed some strong black tea, dipped the paper in it, and dried it on top of the wood stove. To make the pictures look old, we tore around them. Then, we were to glue them onto foil-covered card stock and into the album, and write about each of the people. Since there are 17 pictures, it took awhile!

There are pros and cons to using this course. Some of the pros, for us, would be that it gave us something different to do in the middle of the school year. The boys all liked that they had only math or language arts to do in a day, not both. They also enjoyed making things from paper. It gave us some art/craft time, which we don’t tend to get otherwise. We learned new techniques for making things from paper (I learned that none of them had heard of scoring cardstock for folding it!), and they practiced coloring and making things look as nice as possible. They also learned what two-sided tape is and how to use it.

We used a lot of 2-sided tape to put together these lapbooks, but it was worth it. The children are all happy with their final product.

See how thrilled she is to show off hers? I’m not sure who took this picture; I found it on the camera this morning!

As far as cons, the biggest one would be all the printing. I spent a lot of time at it, trying to get the cardstock printed correctly (I now know a lot more about the innards of the printer than I did before!). It also cost a lot to do that printing. We went through about a ream of paper, since I was making five copies of everything, and had to buy extra cardstock, which, where we live, is hard to find and expensive. I was glad when Esther found a place we could order it online!

One of the last projects was to make a game with which to review what we learned. We played it this morning for our history time.

Overall, I’m happy that we used this course. It’s not the way we normally do history, and we would have gotten more out of it if we had done it more slowly and read books to go along with the supplied text. However, we’ll be going through that era slowly within the next year, so we’ll be referring to our projects at times. If we hadn’t gone through it as fast as we did, we never would have finished it, knowing us! If you and your children enjoy hands-on activities to go along with historical studies, try out the Time Travelers line of products. They are well-done and we really enjoyed what we did. Or, if you’re not sure whether this type of study is for you, this would be a good way to find out! And, here’s an interesting blog post I found about this series, which explains why the publisher pulled it together and some of their thoughts about how to use it.

World History (Project Passport), U.S. History Studies (Time Travelers) and Timeline Collection: A Collection of Historical Timeline Figures {Home School in the Woods Reviews}

Photos From Early July 2019

July 27, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We’ve had a busy month! Here are a few photos from the first couple of weeks of the month.

We’ve had a few sunrises! It’s been a very rainy month, but here is proof that occasionally we see a little sunshine (actually, this week has been sunny). The person walking along the road is Mr. Intellectual, heading down to bring up the milk for me.

Esther went to the library one day, and the little ones spent a lot of time that evening reading library books!

Every time a pilot vehicle goes past, Mr. Diligence tries to grab my camera to get a photo of whatever big thing is passing this time.

06-IMG_5841

This is a kayak going down the Nile River!

07-IMG_5842

Something that makes me very happy! Mr. Diligence actually reads for fun sometimes now. This has taken a lot of years and much hard work to accomplish. He discovered he can enjoy reading when he was sick in the States in February and didn’t have an audio book to listen to, but couldn’t do anything else.

08-IMG_5843

A few years ago, my boys found a huge ball of yarn at the dump. It was hand-spun, and fairly loose; I suspect it was actually roving, which was intended to be spun into better yarn. I crocheted it into a rough rectangle, and now I’m making it into the inner for a baby-sized duvet. It smells of lanolin—a smell I love! I’ve gotten as far as sewing a cover over it, and sort of quilting it together with the sewing machine, and cutting out fabric patches for another, removable cover.

11-IMG_5846

So, we wash a tub and put it outside in the sun to dry—and what does Goofball do? Ensure that we have to wash it again! Doesn’t she look happy.

13-IMG_5852

What We’re Reading—July 2019

July 24, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Note: Links in this post may be affiliate links, and if they are, they will benefit Esther.

We’ve been reading just as much as usual lately, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve gotten through as many books as normal. Some of them have been long! We are just finishing Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories, Volume 10—now we need to choose a different Bible story book to read. We finished David Macaulay’s Cathedral, which we were reading when I wrote the last post like this, and followed that with his Pyramid. We found it quite fascinating! One sentence that Mr. Intellectual really liked said something about how this Pharoah (imaginary, by the way) built his pyramid 10 feet lower than the Great Pyramid, out of respect for the great Khufu—but built it on higher ground, which made the peak 10 feet higher than Khufu’s! One thing that made this book especially interesting was that we have been reading Genesis and Exodus lately for Family Worship, so we grabbed this book and referred to it when we read about Joseph being embalmed to see what was done with his body. Since we finished that one, we have started reading Pagoo, a delightful story about a hermit crab from hatching, on through the rest of his life. Our last book each morning has to do with history; the latest one is Drumbeats in Williamsburg. It has to do with the events around Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. Of course, a lot of the story is predictable—as expected, the main character finds the spy! It’s pretty interesting, though.

After lunch is when we read the books the children choose. We’ve been reading through the Little House Series for over a year now, and to finish it off we’re going through The Three Faces of Nellie, about the three different people Laura based the character of Nellie Oleson on. I’m reading the interesting parts, and skipping over the repetitious genealogical bits. After that, we’re reading Gone-Away Lake, which has been a long-time favorite in our family. Two children who are exploring the woods near their home get lost and find themselves in a dried-up lake bed, then find a row of falling-down houses with only two people living in them. It’s quite a fun adventure! Our third book each day for the past couple of months has been Kayaks Down the Nile, about three men who kayaked from near the start of the Nile River to its mouth at the Mediterranean in the 1950s. This inspired Mr. Imagination to shape a kayak from a blanket, and make a “cataract” from bits of cardboard, which he helped Little Miss to kayak through. We finished it a couple of days ago and started The Great Brain, which seems like it will be a fun story. I’ve never read it, though. I let Little Miss choose our fourth story, since she’s been begging me to read her chapter books. She chose Olive, the story of a foster child, for her first book.

The only other afternoon book we read in the past month was A Pig for Pablo. This is a story about a little boy in Paraguay who rescues a runt piglet, and then works to earn money to buy it. I was rather surprised by the ending—it’s not the normal story you’d expect, with the pig living as a pet forever.

The other books we’ve read for history have all had to do with the American Revolution. Fourth of July Raid had to do with a surprise attack by the British on a small town in Connecticut. This Time, Tempe Wick? is a picture book about Washington’s troops and a mutiny during a hard winter—and a girl who outsmarts them. When I found Swamp Fox of the Revolution on Internet Archive, I wanted to read it to my boys. I remember getting it from the library when I was 9 or 10; it was the only book I had ever read about the Revolutionary War in the South. We found it very interesting—a piece of history that you rarely hear about! We followed that with Traitor, by Jean Fritz—the story of Benedict Arnold. She did a superb job of making us extremely disgusted with the man and his self-centered ways! After we finished that story, we read a picture book titled Bugle, A Puppy in Old Yorktown. It’s a cute story from 1958. We enjoyed the old illustrations.

And what have I been reading? Some very interesting books! Nobody’s Boy really captured my interest; it’s the story of a 3-year-old Mennonite boy who was kidnapped in Mexico in 1926, only a few years after his family had moved there from Canada. He had no idea who he really was for over 20 years. This is a true story, and quite gripping. At the moment, I’m reading another non-fiction, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist. We have this book because I had downloaded the audio book several years ago when it was free, and when Gayle listened to it a year ago, he was so impressed he wanted us to have a print copy. It got loaned out before I had a chance to read it, and now that it’s back I’m quickly reading it before handing it on to another friend. It is amazing—the authors have pulled together many reasons, from all facets of science and life, to show that there has to be a God Who began and is in control of everything.

I also read a library book Esther brought home, Wonderland Creek. It was more a fluffy-style book, but I enjoyed it. The mystery woven through it kept me going till the end. I liked the theme of the story, that we need to live life, not just read books and live vicariously! The romance was nice, too, although I could have done without the distraction of a second man who courted the main character and was fairly physical with her.

Last week, I read The Inn at Hidden Run. I had read several reviews of it, and was intrigued by the differences in opinion about this story, so when I found it available for review, I thought I’d see what my opinion was. Well, it wasn’t a very fast-moving story, but it was certainly unique. There was no romance in it, which I liked. The premise of the story was that a girl showed up in town with some problems, and a genealogist helped her work through them by researching the girl’s family tree. There was a second timeline in the book, from the 1870s (the main story is modern). It felt a little forced to me to put the two stories together and have a family’s problems solved by discovering something from their past.

A couple of weeks ago, I read What a Pair! (Double Trouble Book 1) about a pair of twins in an Amish family. I have been seeing reviews of books by the author, and decided to see what her style is like. I’m frankly not impressed. Most Amish fiction feels fake to me, and this one, unfortunately, is no exception. It didn’t help that, several times, she had her characters stung by bumblebees and then pick out the stinger that was left behind.

Yesterday, I finished The Trouble With Nancy, by Chautona Havig. I wasn’t planning to read it till after the Atheist book, but then I had an afternoon/evening when I didn’t feel good and couldn’t do much. I decided some light reading would be nice, so picked up this one. It was fun, but another fluffy story. What I like about Chautona’s fluffy stories, though, is that I’m never disgusted with them. She does her research, and they are clean. Another thing I like about this one in particular is that, though it is about a girl disguising herself as a boy, she doesn’t “save the day.” She bumbles through what she’s doing and is very glad to get home and be herself again at the end.

Fun With Friends

July 20, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Two weeks ago, a friend brought her son over to spend the week with our boys. We love to go visit them and be at their church when we can, so the following weekend we took him home and spent the night there. Most of the week he was with us we were at home, although one day Esther took all the boys to Pancake Rocks (possibly some pictures to follow in another post, if/when I get around to looking at a couple of memory cards that aren’t home right now!). I only took two pictures here at home that week—have a look at what can happen in our living room, with lots of boys living here! Simon was trying to keep the other two boys in the living room, and he succeeded.

Here’s the other picture. I don’t know what Esther was showing them, but apparently they were interested! I’m also not sure who took the picture.

On our way to our friends’ house, we stopped at a small parking area just 1 km down from the top of Lewis Pass, on the Canterbury side, for a short stretch break. It was cold, but so beautiful there! Esther decided she wanted a picture of all the boys, so they lined up. First they tried putting their chins on each other’s shoulders; that would have worked except that Mr. Imagination was in the sunshine so his face is blurred out. Then, they tried the other pose. Their friend claims our boys as his brothers!

We got to their house in time for lunch, which gave the children a lot of time to play. The younger ones built this hut from a bunch of stuff they found laying around, and played in and around it for hours! See Mr. Imagination peeking out? The older boys went out on the hills, as they love to do there. They killed two geese and dressed them for eating. Simon was in his glory! He loves to hunt, but has rarely caught anything.

Once it got dark, the little ones had to come in. Little Miss played for a couple of hours with a kitchen set. In this first picture, she is listening to her brothers trying to tell her that she should cook worms. I didn’t quite get the most horrified expression, but trust me, she was NOT impressed!

Book Review—Blessing Bentley

July 18, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 7 Comments

Book: Blessing Bentley
Author: Chautona Havig
Genre: Fiction / Christian / Romantic Women’s Fiction
Release date: June 13, 2019

Note: I was given a copy of this book by the author. All opinions expressed are my own. Links in this post may be affiliate links.

Bentley Girard’s about to propose… to a guy she doesn’t even love.

Not THAT way anyway.

After studying everything the Bible has to say about marriage, she’s decided she wants in. Now. So who’s going to take her up on that offer?

And just why did no one reminded her that those vows include that little word, “love.”

Oops!

With her Bible in her hip pocket, and a shiny new ring on her finger, Bentley navigates this new world of marriage with grace and… oh, who is she kidding? She flounders until she gets a sure footing and hangs on tight.

My Thoughts:

The typical romance book follows a fairly set formula. You know what that is. Woman sees good-looking man, gets to know him and he falls for her, soon they are both in love and can’t live without each other. They get married. Most books are pretty predictable, and I get very tired of that. Blessing Bentley does not follow this kind of formula. I found it very refreshing, and loved all the truths that were brought out in it.

Bentley had her eye on one of the men in her singles group, but it seemed like he was happy with the way things were, just hanging out together with the group most of the time. She was happy with it, too—until one day, she was challenged to study the Bible and see what God said about marriage. What she found changed her life, and she found herself asking a man to marry her so they could glorify God together in that way. Of course, his reaction was predictable—but what would he conclude after study, prayer, and counseling with his parents?

Life did not go smoothly for Bentley and her new husband after their unconventional wedding (which you just have to read about!). All those little things that happen to test every couple’s love came up—how could she cope? Would she ever find herself in love with him?

A couple of passages really stood out to me. At one point, Bentley and her husband appear on television because their story caught the attention of someone. Bentley was challenged about submission, and replied, “People think Biblical submission means you no longer have opinions; preferences and things like that—totally not true. It’s about preferring others over ourselves.” A little later in the same interview, her mother says, “How many people in divorce court would tell you that they were ‘in love’ when they got married?” Good point! Since love is a choice, we must choose to love the one we marry. This book is full of truth, and I can hardly recommend it highly enough.

In a way I could identify with Bentley. When I said “Yes” to my husband’s proposal, I could not have said honestly that I was in love with him. I knew he was the one I wanted to spend my life with, and that he was a man of integrity that I could trust with my life, but “falling in love” came later. So much of this story rings true to me—I love it! It’s actually hard for me to write this review because I love the book so much. If you like a story that has Biblical truths woven all through it, give this book a try. Chautona has explored what marriage is intended to be, and what love really is, and made it into a wonderful story. This is my newest favorite book! I have read the digital version, but I fully intend to get myself a print copy as soon as I can get one without paying international shipping.

About the Author:

Chautona Havig lives in an oxymoron, escapes into imaginary worlds that look startlingly similar to ours and writes the stories that emerge. An irrepressible optimist, Chautona sees everything through a kaleidoscope of It’s a Wonderful Life sprinkled with fairy tales. Find her on the web and say howdy—if you can remember how to spell her name.

Guest Post From Chautona Havig:

If You Need to Save Time, Don’t Ask for Help

Not from my friend anyway. It all started with a conversation about Bentley…

She pops up now and then—the most ubiquitous (and yet not) of my unpublished characters, you might say. Who is this unsung Bentley, and why should we care about her? For that matter, why has her story been languishing in my “to be edited” pile for over a decade?”

It’s worse than that. Bentley isn’t the only book that’s been sitting there, unedited, waiting for a chance at daylight. There’s also Tait’s story. Andi’s story. Ami’s story… all the unpublished stories. Those don’t even include the partially done ones.

It’s an illness, I tell ya.

Some people may not know this about me, but I plot out my books while I’m driving. I get in the car, turn on my voice recorder, and talk to myself. You can’t know how grateful I am for cellphones. I don’t own or use one, but man I’m glad they exist. Know why? Because people don’t give you weird looks when you talk to yourself in the car now. When I was a kid, that wasn’t true. Not that I know from personal experience or anything. whistles

So one trip down south (it’s an hour and a half to go anywhere from my house, and most of my trips are at least three hours one way), I realized that Tait and Bentley’s stories could be merged. It would be awesome. Two books. One stone. If I did that to a bunch of my languishing manuscripts, I could clear out that unfinished file in no time! (Okay, let me dream here. Eternal optimist, remember?)

And that brings us back to Blessing Bentley

I was at my friend Sandy’s house (if you know Celebrate Lit, yes, that Sandy), and I told her I needed a new title. Why? Because now it included Tait and his story.

We talked. We schemed and plotted. Sandy wanted something to happen that just can’t. I’d seriously have to rewrite the entire series. Oh, and then there would be issues with already published books. Ahem.

Then it happened. She said the words. “It needs to be two books.”

I could have put an ice cube down her shirt. Do you remember how excited I was to have two combined into one??? Now we’re back to two books. Still, they were written as two. I just don’t have a satisfactory ending for Tait’s.

That’s when things got fun. Sandy tossed out one idea. I tossed it back. She remolded it and flipped it in the air. I caught it, made a few changes, and voila! We had a BOOK. And it would be adorable.

Then she swore at me.

Okay, so she actually just said, “You really need a third book, friend.”

Anyone who has ever heard her talk, can hear her voice there. I know you can. Still, as sweet and kind as she might have meant to sound, I heard swearing.

Another book. You’ve got to be kidding me! I went from having two books morphed into one being split back in two, and now you want to add one? I’m trying to reduce the to-do pile!

But then I remembered another story that’s been percolating since I wrote 31 Kisses. Carson’s brother is newly single. And well…

Yep. Enter trilogy.

Marriage of Conviction—that was supposed to be the title of Blessing Bentley. Who knew that when I started writing that book fifteen years ago—who knew it would end up being the title of a series instead. Marriages of Conviction. Blessing Bentley, Tempting Tait, and Charming Chloe.

Welcome to a new look on marriage and a wild ride with these characters!

And remember… if you think I have too many series… Well, this one’s Sandy’s fault.

To purchase your copy, click here.

To visit more of the blog stops on this tour, click here. (Scroll down the page to see the stops.)

To enter a fun giveaway, click here.

June 2019 Photos Part 2

July 13, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of June’s random photos.

Little Miss got hold of my camera one afternoon and took a bunch of pictures of the toys she was playing with. I saved a couple I thought were interesting!

One Saturday evening, Simon went with me to milk. Because of the steep hill down which we have to go to reach the cow right now, and the fact that I’m pregnant, I need help carrying the bucket back up, so the bigger three boys all help out. Simon rarely gets the privilege, because he’s usually not home from work yet when I head down. This time, though, he needed a piece of wood for a project he was working on, so he took his ax along and accompanied me. Just after we left our street, Esther and Mr. Sweetie came up towards us from a walk around the block, so she took our picture.

All seven children played a game of Skip-Bo Golf together one Sunday evening!

Mr. Imagination created this deer for his daddy’s birthday present!

I was amused when this happened one evening! I was helping Simon with a lesson for his apprenticeship, since he has trouble reading, and Esther wanted input on an order she was putting through for me with some company.

Princess is rather a spoiled cat. She thinks the space in front of the fire belongs to her. A lot of mornings, she will sleep there with her paw tightly clamped around her eyes, like this!

Mr. Sweetie built this train track one day, then wanted to document it.

Book Review—The Heart Changer

July 11, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

As anyone who regularly reads my blog knows, we do a lot of reading aloud. I read for half an hour or more in the morning while the dishes are being washed, and again after lunch while those dishes are being done. We really enjoy historical fiction, so when The Heart Changer by Jarm Del Boccio, Author, was offered for review, I requested it as fast as I could! We received a MOBI copy of this book from the publisher, because the shipping to New Zealand is so high (one of the few things I don’t like about living here—guess you can’t have everything!). I was pleased with the formatting of this book; it was well-done, with all the features I’m used to getting with Kindle books from Amazon. It’s a short book; although there are 25 chapters, each one took me only 2-5 minutes to read aloud.

The Heart Changer tells the story of the Isrealite girl who was captured by Syrian raiders and taken to Damascus to be a servant of Naaman’s wife. If you have ever read the books of Kings in the Bible, you’ll remember this story, how Naaman contracted leprosy and the girl told him about the prophet Elisha in Samaria who could heal him. This story is told from her point of view.

Miriam was terrified, naturally, when she was captured by the Syrian raiders. She was also angry and bitter that God would allow such a thing to happen to her. All the way to Syria, Miriam complained to her friend who had also been captured, and her friend tried to point her to God. By the time she reached her destination, Miriam had become willing to be a good servant—but could she ever forgive Captain Naaman for his part in destroying her home and possibly her family? When disaster struck him, how would she respond?

As far as the basic story, we really enjoyed it. This short book brought the time of the kings to life, and helped us to feel what it would have been like to live in Israel at that time. The theme of the story, which was how God can transform a hard, bitter heart, is also quite good. There were just a few things that struck us as not quite true-to-life. One of them was the way Miriam talked to God a few times. She called Him Abba, or Abba Father. My understanding is that the ancient Jews would not have talked so familiarly to God; they held Him in such awe that they would not so much as pronounce His name Jehovah, let alone call Him Father. Today, of course, He is our Father—but I don’t believe they would have looked at Him that way at that time. Another aspect that didn’t quite sound realistic was the way Naaman’s wife treated Miriam; she acted as a loving mother, rather than a mistresss talking to a slave. It worked well for the story, though; I’m not sure how the story would have worked the way it did, otherwise. The last thing that didn’t strike us as realistic was when both Miriam and her mistress traveled to Israel with Naaman when he went to request healing from the prophet.

This is a lovely story for, especially, middle-grade girls who like short books with a sweet ending. If you want absolute realism, this is not the book for you. There are some very good points to consider, such as when Miriam’s friend tells her, “We can’t know why this happened. Only Jehovah in His wisdom knows. But—we must be faithful.” Another quote that stood out was when Miriam’s mistress compared Miriam’s life to the weaving she was doing. It was beautiful on top—but if you only saw the underside, it would not appear pretty or even meaningful at all.

There is a study guide available for this book. It includes an interview with the author that offers insight into why she wrote this book and what she hopes to accomplish with it (and the correct pronunciation of her name!). To find the study guide, go to this page and scroll down to the graphic that mentions the teacher’s guide; click on that graphic. There are a number of suggestions for things to research to add to the learning experience. Two Syrian recipes are also in the study guide—they look delicious!

For more people’s opinions of this book, read what the rest of the 45 reviewers had to say by clicking the picture below!

The Heart Changer {Jarm Del Boccio, Author Reviews}