NZ Filbruns

Book Review—Penelope’s Pursuit

October 13, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 3 Comments

ABOUT THE BOOK

Book: Penelope’s Pursuit
Author: Chautona Havig
Genre: Historical Romantic Suspense
Release date: June 29, 2021

Are mail-order-brides changing their minds or is something sinister going on in Kansas?

Ten years ago, Penelope’s sister ran away as a mail-order bride, and it was the last their family ever heard from her. Now, with their parents dead and Penelope all alone, the young woman has one goal. Find her sister.

It took enough grit for Henry to write to Miss Mildred Crenshaw about finding him a wife in the first place, but when the stage arrives and no bride steps off, the whole thing feels like a confidence scheme. Investigation, however, sends chills down his spine as he realizes women are leaving the east for the west but many never arrive at their destinations.

Is it any wonder that Penelope doesn’t trust the man who abducts her from the clutches of her new friends and rides off into the sunset? Is his explanation reasonable? Can she convince him to help her find her sister?

And is she about to fall in love with a homesteader on the untamed prairies of Kansas?

My Thoughts:

Other than Sarah, Plain and Tall, I had never read a mail-order bride story. They just didn’t appeal to me. I don’t like to read straight-up romance, and my impression was that this genre would be that. Well, then Chautona Havig wrote a mail-order bride story. I will read anything she writes, so I read one of that genre. I don’t think it’s a typical story of that type, and I’m still not interested in reading more of them—but I really like Penelope’s Pursuit, even though there is a lot in it that isn’t nice. One chapter in particular, chapter 19, has something awful in it—I can’t tell you what it is, because that would be a spoiler. Just know that it’s hard to read.

We (or at least I) tend to think of human trafficking as a modern problem. As Penelope discovered, it was likely happening in the American West in the 1800s, as well. Most likely, many mail-order brides found an unhappy end. This story shows that not all was wonderful in the “old days” that we think of fondly. The hard realities of life are clearly described here—but also the hope and the healing we can find with God. I highly recommend Penelope’s Pursuit to anyone who likes historical romance with a lot more in it than just romance.

I received a review copy of this book from the author, and these are my honest thoughts about it.

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 at chautona.com and say howdy—if you can remember how to spell her name.

More From Chautona:

Mail Order Brides: Do We Romanticize the Past?

Although I recall reading about mail-order brides in school… somewhere… Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah, Plain and Tall was my first introduction to the idea of advertising for or requesting the services of a matchmaker to find a wife. The book and the subsequent movie showed the difficulties of such a marriage and left us all with a satisfactory ending.

Some years later, while doing a bit of research, I discovered another side of the coin—a horrifying picture of what happened to some gullible young women and the unscrupulous people who used such matchmaking schemes as a means for human trafficking. It sickened me, as it should anyone.

All my ideas for mail order bride novels ended up as wadded up balls of mental paper and in the wastepaper basket of my mind. A few years passed, and I came up with a twist on mail order brides, one that will see the light of day if I ever have time to write it. A few more years passed, and a series of books featuring a matchmaking service for mail-order brides and the Homestead Act resurrected those ideas. I smoothed a couple out, reconsidered, and decided against writing them.

I’d have to miss the opportunity to join the series.

My mind never does follow orders well. Within minutes of that decision, I had a story. What would happen if there was some funny business going on with girls going west? How could I combine a satisfactory ending where two people came to a meeting of the minds and hearts in the midst of fighting something that ugly?

Penelope’s Pursuit was born.

Is my story idealized? Probably. I’ll be frank with you. I’m okay with that, too. See, sometimes all we need is a reminder that mankind is sinful and in need of a Savior before the story turns into how things should have been. After all, fiction mirrors reality, but it is also an escape.

I hope Penelope’s escape to the west and her pursuit of her sister encourages you to turn to the Lord for every decision, in every trouble, and with every praise possible in between.

To purchase your copy, click here.

To visit more of the blog stops on this tour, click here.

To enter a fun giveaway, click here.

Picnic!

October 10, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One sunny afternoon, our little girls went outside to play. Little Miss packed a snack for the two of them, and took out a sheet, and they had a picnic together. I got the camera up just too late to catch the cat who wanted to join them!After their picnic, the girls went to the empty section in front of our house, which had just been mowed, and raked up the grass. First, Little Miss buried herself in it.

Then, Mr. Imagination joined them, and they organized the grass clippings into walls to make rooms of a house! They spent at least 2 1/2 hours playing outside that evening, having lots of fun. It was getting pretty chilly before they came in. The cat liked having them out there, too!

Product Review—Spelling Ninja from Reading Kingdom

October 8, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

A couple of months ago, I was offered the chance to review a program from Reading Kingdom again. We have used programs from this company in the past, and while the children had fun with them, I didn’t find them overly helpful for us. One of the choices offered this time, though, was Spelling Ninja. Mr. Imagination tends to be imaginative with his spelling, as well as in daily life, so I thought maybe this program would help him. He has been using it now for about six weeks.

There are 15 levels in Spelling Ninja. Each level has 10 pages. Each of those pages has a sentence, with a picture to illustrate the sentence. The sentence are progressively longer as the child works through the program.

Each sentence is read to the child, and then he can read it to himself. When he is ready, he clicks a button or hits enter to show he is ready to move on. Then, he is supposed to type the sentence. In the first level, only one word is blanked out at a time to be typed, but gradually the number of words that are blanked out is increased until, in level 9, where Mr. Imagination is currently working, most of the sentence is blanked out! The idea is to increase his capacity for remembering the words and how they look. He is given a certain amount of time to type each word, and if he can’t get it in that time, the program shows him the word again, and then he has to give it another try. If he has too much trouble with a sentence, he has to type the whole thing again. He can’t move on until he has typed each word perfectly.

When Mr. Imagination first started using Spelling Ninja, he got very frustrated, to the point of tears. He was having trouble finding the keys he needed on the keyboard, and it was also moving too fast for him. I got into his settings and changed it so that he had more time, and that helped. It also helped when he finally learned to check that Caps Lock was off! He has been spending ten minutes a day using this program. To be honest, I haven’t seen much progress in his spelling abilities. I think it’s good practice for him, and maybe someday he’ll learn to pay attention to the spelling of the words he writes. It’s not a magic cure, but hopefully will be a piece in the puzzle of teaching spelling! It is definitely helping his memory for words, since he has to remember eight or ten words of a sentence to complete a page correctly. It should help him learn to use punctuation better, too, since he must type that in correctly to finish a sentence. I really like that he can use the program by himself; I only have to be involved if he runs into trouble.

Click on the image below to read reviews from other families of this and two other programs from Reading Kingdom! I plan to read a few to see if Spelling Ninja helped their children, and if I can pick up some tips to make it work better for Mr. Imagination.

Product Review—The Critical Thinking Co.™

October 5, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Little Miss and I have been having fun working through a book titled Building Thinking Skills Beginning 2, from The Critical Thinking Co.™. We always enjoy the workbooks we get from this company, and this one is no exception! She loves doing pages from it, and always wants to do more than I had planned. We started out doing five pages a day, but now we’re often doing ten or more.

The first several pages were very simple—name a shape and its color, figure out what “rule” applies to a group of shapes, match shapes and colors. Then there were some activities having to do with numbers of shapes in a group, and then we started working with patterns. Some pages have groups of pictures, and she is supposed to figure out which one is different, point it out, and tell me why it is different. That takes some thinking! As we progress through the book, I’m seeing that similar assignments get more difficult. A new step or concept will be added to the ones we’ve already been doing. For example, instead of shapes of particular colors filling a grid, and having to figure out which one is missing, there might be numbers or symbols, and the colors vary. Instead of one symbol missing from a grid, there are two missing—and then three.

Concepts like halves, longer/shorter, more/less, and taller/shorter are introduced. Most of the pages are very colorful and attractive, although some are black and white. That contrast, in my opinion, adds to the attractiveness of the book. A lot of pages instruct the child to point to a particular item; some say to draw lines to it. Some pages require drawing simple shapes. Little Miss quite enjoys the ones where she is to color pictures with a limited number of colors, and make each one different!

This book is available either in a hard copy or as a PDF. I received the PDF because I live outside the United States and it would have been cost-prohibitive to mail one here. I think I would order the PDF if I was buying the book, though. Most of it can be done on the computer screen, with the child just pointing to things or drawing a line with her fingers. A lot of pages just require talking about what is there! I’m printing the ones that tell her to draw something, and it’s nice that a lot of them can be printed in black and white. The biggest reason I like the PDF is that I will have it for Miss Joy to use in a couple of years, whereas a print book is consumable.

Little Miss is a bit on the older side for this book; it’s intended for use by preschoolers/kindergartners. She does have to stop and think a bit about some of the assignments, though. It’s been good for her to be forced to think logically to complete the activities! As we progress through the book, she is having to think a little more and a little more. I like this book and the way it helps children to think logically! I want to go through it with Miss Joy when she is four or five—I think she’ll love it, too!
Click on the image below to read more reviews of products from The Critical Thinking Co.™.

August 2021 Photos

September 26, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the last photos from August!

This cow took us by surprise on her due date. She had bagged up a little, but not much, and sure didn’t look like she was ready to calve, as far as I was concerned, when I looked at her the night before. In the morning, there was evidence that she had calved—but no calf! We searched around the area, and down the cliff which she was at the top of, and couldn’t find anything. Several hours later, Mr. Diligence went back out and searched more. The calf was at the bottom of the cliff, way back in a blackberry patch! He pulled it out, and he and Mr. Sweetie carried it up the steep cliff to reunite it with its mother. That calf is fine, but we know now—this cow doesn’t bag up much, and we can’t go by the way she looks!

During lockdown, Esther and Elijah got the tiny house painted. We were sure thankful we had bought the paint a month before that!

Gayle spent one afternoon helping get the chicks outside. One of our cats is a hunter extraordinaire, and had pulled one chick out of the coop through a crack under the door (I discovered the crime when I went outside and found her eating it on the step of the house). Therefore, we decided we had better electrify the top of the fence around the run, since that cat likes to perch on top of it. Here, Gayle is stringing up the wires.

The tulip magnolia bloomed—so gorgeous! See Little Miss swinging in it?

This is what is left of my winter garden—broccoli, cabbage that didn’t head, and leeks.

Inside the greenhouse. This is a patch of peppers we wintered over; I think two of them have made it through two winters now. Gayle transplanted the aloe plants into that area, as well, and there are two or three Cape Gooseberries.

Because lockdown caught us unprepared (I planned to buy enough potting soil for the year, but couldn’t because we were locked down so fast), I started my tomato seeds in the ground in the greenhouse, and then put them in punnets after I was able to get some potting soil. Here are the tiny baby tomatoes, starting to come up.

Most of the greenhouse is full of lettuce and spinach.

See how wet it is? This is a common sight. Any time it rains, we have surface flooding in the yard.

The garden on a rainy winter day.

The chicks are cosy and warm! This was a month ago, when they still needed heat from the lights.

About the end of August, they were big enough to go out into the run.

Simon replaced the head gasket on this car. It was Esther’s car, till the head gasket blew, and now he uses it for hunting.

A lockdown Sunday afternoon. We played an entire game of Chicken Foot dominoes—from Double 15 down to Double 0!

Gayle played games with the younger ones.

Esther saw this funny sight one day! They sure do enjoy the sun.

Simon’s birthday presents. We each gave him a bag of salt and vinegar chips, his favorite kind, wrapped in all sorts of wild and wonderful packages. By the third one, he had figured out the joke. The last one included monetary gifts from several of us.

We saw this out the window one morning. Our cows were at the top of the hill as the sun came up.

Children’s Fun in August

September 19, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One Sunday afternoon, our little girls decided to play the piano in the home in which we had church that morning. Gayle grabbed a couple of pictures with his phone.

Our younger children had fun digging holes in the sand down by the river with some other children. This is an area that frequently floods; the sand is deposited during the floods. There are several acres of it!

Tug-of-war another Sunday after church.

The first day of lockdown, Gayle took the younger children down to the creek in the paddock in which we keep our cows, and they tested out a boat they had just built.

They tried going through the culvert with it, but that didn’t work so well!

Little Miss was thrilled to be allowed to paddle the boat by herself!

Mr. Imagination made cookies one day, and made one of them very big! He didn’t eat it all at one go, though.

Birthday girl! Esther made her a cheesecake for her special dessert. She loved it!

She loves sitting in the dishpan! She says she’s taking a bath.

A quiet Sunday afternoon.

Birds!

September 16, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Mr. Imagination, who is my nature-loving, scientific sort of child, spent a couple of weeks recently taking photos of all the birds he could see around here. This wood pigeon posed for him on top of the electric pole.

One morning he was very excited to see a baby plover in front of the house! I could hardly believe it, since it was a month earlier than they hatched last year, but he was right!

A couple of thrushes of some sort.

A blackbird on the neighbor’s rooftop.

One of the adult plovers.

The thrush again.

There’s the baby plover again!

And a picture of it with one of the parents. That baby was the star of the show that day! It was a bit difficult to keep attention focused on school books.

Book Review—Twelve Weeks to Midnight Blue

September 8, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 3 Comments

About the Book

Book: Twelve Weeks to Midnight Blue
Author: Steve Searfoss
Genre: Fiction
Release date: January 26, 2020

Chance Sterling launches a pool cleaning business over the summer. Join Chance as he looks for new customers, discovers how much to charge them, recruits an employee, deals with difficult clients, and figures out how to make a profit. Oh, and his sister Addie wants in on the action too. Will they learn how to be business partners? He has twelve weeks to reach his goal. Will he make it? Only if he takes some chances.

KidVenture stories are business adventures where kids figure out how to market their company, understand risk, and negotiate. Each chapter ends with a challenge, including business decisions, ethical dilemmas and interpersonal conflict for young readers to wrestle with. As the story progresses, the characters track revenue, costs, profit margin, and other key metrics which are explained in simple, fun ways that tie into the story.

I am a Christian and a parent. My wife and I pay close attention to the books and media our four children consume, and try to make sure the content is edifying, just as Paul exhorts us in Philippians 4:8. I wanted to write a book that met that standard, and was also fun and engaging. KidVenture teaches kids the importance of hard work, of keeping your word and being trustworthy, and telling the truth, even when it means delivering bad news. As the story progresses, the protagonist understands that business is about more than making money as he appreciates the responsibility he has to his customers, his employee and his partner. How you treat people matters in tangible ways.

At the center of the story is a strong family. The two main characters are a brother and sister, who engage in their share of sibling rivalry, but also learn how to work together and forgive each other. At key junctures when they face big dilemmas, they turn to their parents for advice. The kids learn a healthy mix of independence, risk taking and learning through trial and error — balanced with knowing when to ask for help. All of this is presented in a way that is not preachy or hokey, but wrapped inside a story full of unexpected plot twists, witty banter and memorable characters.

My Thoughts:

Sometimes when I request a book for review I’m taking a chance because I’ve never read anything by the author, and can’t even preview the book on Amazon. If the book is a children’s book, and looks like it might be good, I often request it anyway. Some of those turn out to be really good—and some don’t. My mom had the chance to read my most recent gamble before I did. What she had to say was quite reassuring—and made me want to read the book myself! She said, “I really liked Twelve Weeks to Midnight Blue. It introduces basic business principles in story form—using a 10-year-old entrepreneur—in a sufficiently interesting way to keep me reading! I especially appreciated the involvement of the Dad, and the son’s respect for what he had to say.” Whew! I was relieved to hear this.

I really liked Twelve Weeks to Midnight Blue, too. I like the way it clearly explains how businesses work. The importance of treating people nicely and fairly is stressed all the way through. Chance learns the value of honesty. He learns how valuable it is to get along with his sister and listen to his parents. He learns the importance of knowing his math and how math works in real life. He even learns how good it feels to go beyond the call of duty and help someone out! There are a lot of life lessons in this book, beyond just running a business.

All the way through this book, there are pictures of Chance’s calculations and how he worked out what his profits were, and what percentage of his earnings needed to go toward expenses, or what his pay was per hour. Each chapter ends with a dilemma that Chance faced, and a few questions to help children think through what was happening and what Chance should do next. This book is very well-written; I would like my children to read it for themselves! If I have the opportunity to read more books by Steve Searfoss, I will certainly do so!

I received a review copy of this book from CelebrateLit, and these are my honest thoughts about it.

About the Author:

I wrote my first KidVenture book after years of making up stories to teach my kids about business and economics. Whenever they’d ask how something works or why things were a certain way, I would say, “Let’s pretend you have a business that sells…” and off we’d go. What would start as a simple hypothetical to explain a concept would become an adventure spanning several days as my kids would come back with new questions which would spawn more plot twists. Rather than give them quick answers, I tried to create cliffhangers to get them to really think through an idea and make the experience as interactive as possible.

I try to bring that same spirit of fun, curiosity and challenge to each KidVenture book. That’s why every chapter ends with a dilemma and a set of questions. KidVenture books are fun for kids to read alone, and even more fun to read together and discuss. There are plenty of books where kids learn about being doctors and astronauts and firefighters. There are hardly any where they learn what it’s like to run small business. KidVenture is different. The companies the kids start are modest and simple, but the themes are serious and important.

I’m an entrepreneur who has started a half dozen or so businesses and have had my share of failures. My dad was an entrepreneur and as a kid I used to love asking him about his business and learning the ins and outs of what to do and not do. Mistakes make the best stories — and the best lessons. I wanted to write a business book that was realistic, where you get to see the characters stumble and wander and reset, the way entrepreneurs do in real life. Unlike most books and movies where business is portrayed as easy, where all you need is one good idea and the desire to be successful, the characters in KidVenture find that every day brings new problems to solve.

More From Steve:

To purchase your copy, click here.

To visit more of the blog stops on this tour, click here.

To enter a fun giveaway, click here.

Jim’s Flat Area

September 5, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, our older boys announced they wanted to take us to see the area in which they have been hunting possums occasionally this winter. We got home from church about halfway through the afternoon, and quickly took off up the road to the east out of town. When we got to the track that leads to Jim’s Flat, we turned off the main road. The boys wanted us to see the hut and the cage that goes across the river at Jim’s Flat. However, when we got about halfway there, Simon, who was driving, suddenly pulled off and stopped. He had found a walking track, which they had been looking for for some time. (It doesn’t work very well to find a poorly-marked track in the dark!) We decided to walk along this track and see if we could find a hut someone had told them about. The track turned out to be easy to follow. It looked like it was probably a bush railway line at one point, likely when the area was logged a hundred years ago or more. It is straight and fairly level, and built up a little from the surrounding terrain in most places. There are a few very muddy places, but we discovered that if we walked right in the middle of them, the ground was firmer than at the edges! The biggest problem we had was that a few years ago, a lot of trees had fallen down across the track. It was likely the cyclone we had in February 2018, right after we moved here. Someone had gone through with a chain saw and cleared enough of the track that we could get through. A couple of those spots the trees were so thick that we pretty much went through a tunnel! We never did find the hut. We think we got close to it, but we were in danger of losing daylight and being stuck out in the bush for the night, so turned around. It was a great walk, though! We all thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s wonderful to have older sons who love to take the family on an adventure.

Did you notice the moss and ferns? They are very typical of the bush around here. We get plenty of water!

Here are a couple of photos Gayle took at Jim’s Hut the first time they went there, in early July. This cage on a cable goes across the Ahaura River. The boys usually take it across the river to go hunting possums. Apparently it’s really exciting when the river is in flood! I’m not anxious for a ride on it myself.

July 2021 Photos

September 1, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Finally, the last few photos from July!

Two little girls reading. Miss Joy is sitting on a bag of little bits of firewood.

I’m not sure what Simon was doing here! It was bedtime.

Our backyard most of the winter. I was glad when the boys dug in and tidied up that pile of wood.

I went out “shopping” one evening and brought all this in. It made two meals.

The blocks got used for a few days, as the younger ones enjoyed building towers.

I was delighted one evening when Simon and Elijah, both in their upper teens, played a game with Little Miss, age 6, for an hour or more.

What is he holding? Spider webs! We read a science lessons about spiders and their webs, so he went around the house collecting silk to see how strong it is.