Interactive and encouraging.
Biblical wisdom, humor, and straight talk combine to encourage girls to be the change they want to see in their families.
Minassian, founder of the popular website LifeLoveandGod.com, flips the focus for girls struggling to relate to their families. Rather than studying the problems, chapters present solutions. Discussions focus on issues such as sibling rivalry, a desire for increased freedom, and self-acceptance. Numbered tips will help readers put the theories into practice. Minassian’s personal stories give life to familiar admonitions to nurture humility, forgiveness, gratitude, and integrity. However, she also is careful to point out that not all families are created equal. While difficulty and strife are common within close interpersonal relationships, abuse and self-harm are never OK. She advises readers to seek professional help for tackling these darker issues. The overearnest big-sister tone might be off-putting to some, but the promise of more peace at home should entice even reluctant readers. While the emphasis is on Christian values, the no-nonsense instruction has a broader appeal. Quizzes and suggestions for related activities are included in every chapter, making this resource appropriate for both group and individual study.
Interactive and encouraging. (Nonfiction. 10-16)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61291-630-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: NavPress
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
This well-constructed if somewhat overwritten collective biography profiles eight Jewish women of this century. From Rose Schneiderman, a union activist in New York City who founded the ILGWU in 1903, to Yael Arad, Israel's first Olympic medalist (in judo, in 1992), Segal highlights the accomplishments of remarkable women. Among her varied heroines: Ida Kaminska, queen of the Yiddish theater; Henrietta Szold, a founder of Hadassah; and Nehama Leibowitz, one of the most influential teachers of Torah in the world. Valuable for bringing the lives of these women to the attention of middle-school children, Segal's book synthesizes material not otherwise readily available to this audience. With contemporary black-and-white photographs. (index) (Biography. 12-15)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-87441-612-4
Page Count: 134
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
For such an argument, see John van der Zee’s Agony in the Garden (Feb. 2003).
A flabby account of a dispiriting matter—namely, sexual abuse at the hands of priests.
In the 1980s and before, writes journalist France (Bag of Toys: Sex, Scandal, and the Death Mask Murder, 1992), without offering much in the way of evidence, little attention was given to instances of such abuse “thanks to cozy relationships among the Church, courts, and media.” That that priestly crime now commands the front pages of so many newspapers owes much to laypeople who, disgusted at what they perceived to be inaction and even cover-up on the part of the Catholic hierarchy, took matters into their own hands in communities across the country. American Catholics have effected such rebellions in the past, France suggests, offering as a useful example their overwhelming rejection of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on birth control, “the most disastrous for the Church in modern times,” which even the national conference of bishops opposed. That encyclical, France argues, was symptomatic of the Church’s unrealistic attitude on matters of sex, particularly in light of the sexual revolution sweeping the outside world at the time. The “generation of clerics who entered seminary in the buttoned-up 1950s and reemerged in the 1960s” behaved badly, so much so that a psychological report to the 1971 synod of bishops estimated that only “10–15 percent of all priests in Western Europe and North America are mature.” The bulk of France’s account is given over to campaigns on the part of the laity to remove “immature” priests from office, very often against the wishes of the Church itself, which has instead sought to protect the good name of bad people. His narrative, however, is excessively anecdotal and too often unfocused; a tighter, more economical argument would have been more useful, especially on so controversial a subject.
For such an argument, see John van der Zee’s Agony in the Garden (Feb. 2003).Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2004
ISBN: 0-7679-1430-9
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
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