These Bible stories are skillfully brought to life with words and pictures.
A children’s book recounts Jesus’ ministry and early Christian history.
DeYoung (The Magic Swing, 2014) tells how Eli, a Hebrew priest, and his son, Nathan, come to understand God afresh after personal experiences with Jesus. Nathan, a 12-year-old disabled boy, is frustrated that he can’t run and play like other kids. A friend borrows a donkey and takes him to Jesus for a miraculous healing. When Jesus is arrested, Nathan insists on going to Jerusalem to thank him. Here he witnesses familiar Gospel scenes: the sky going dark, the crowd scoffing, the thieves to either side, last words from the cross, and Jesus’ death. Meanwhile, when darkness hits, Eli is at the Temple, presenting a sacrifice in the Holy Place. There is an earthquake, and the curtain is torn in two, exposing the Holy of Holies. In DeYoung’s account, Eli smiles, excited at what this might mean for his relationship with God. But surely an observant Jew would have experienced this as a desecration. All too quickly, the event takes on a specifically Christian meaning when Eli and Nathan encounter the risen Jesus, who explains, “I’ve broken the sin barrier that separated God and his people.” From here on, the book quickly summarizes events from the early church, such as the coming of the Holy Spirit, the martyrdom of Stephen, and Paul’s missionary journeys. Eli’s belief in Jesus as the Messiah causes him to be banished from Temple service, and fearing persecution, the family flees to Antioch. The chronology has been condensed here: Nathan is only three years older, yet by the time Paul visited Antioch, 10 years should have passed. This could be mentioned in a note; it would also have been helpful to list the Bible passages used as inspiration. Overall, though, this is an effective way of delivering Scripture to younger readers—Old Testament as well as New, what with Temple service and a Passover meal. And Drewes’ (Dirty Penny, 2017) illustrations are perfect for children’s Bible tales, with brown skin showing these characters are Middle Eastern.
These Bible stories are skillfully brought to life with words and pictures.Pub Date: March 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4908-2741-4
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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