I'm Sally Apokedak, and I
live with my son and my
daughter and my old, old
mother, in the lovely city of
Atlanta.
Born to missionary
parents, I spent my early
years in Taiwan. By the time
I was six, I'd been around
the world. The wanderlust
I acquired early followed me
into adult life, taking me to
work in places as far-flung as
Barrow, Alaska, and Santa
Cruz, Bolivia.
My most fulfilling job,
though, was staying home,
taking care of my family. My
husband was a quadriplegic
and we adopted two children.
You can read more about
me on my bio page.
I'm represented by
Reclaim Management.
54000 / 80000 words.
68% done on my WIP!
I'm talking about life and
children's books, because
the two seem to get all
tangled up together for me.
I've loved both--the life
and the books--ever since
I was...well...a child.
I review books that I
have bought or borrowed
or begged. Sometimes I
beg them from authors
and publishers.
No matter where I get
books, I always give my
honest opinion when I
write reviews. I am not
qualified to review books,
really. I'm just a reader
with strong opinions. I love
talking about what I read
and want to get others
excited about children's
books, too.
Many links on this blog
lead to Amazon.com. If you
like my reviews and you
click on a book title or
cover picture and then buy
the book (or anything else)
from Amazon, I will get a
small percentage of the
sale price. Feel free to do
that. It helps support my
book-buying habit. I made
about thirty bucks this way
last year.
I haven’t looked at these either. I object to the idea, however, that the Bible needs a glossy look and color pics of contemporary kids to be interesting and seem relevant to today’s teen. That’s just not true.
The Bible will be a book teens want to read when people they connect with–the adults they emulate–point them to the Bible, literally and with their lives.
Becky
I hesitated posting this because I just got done having a fit about Christians backbiting other Christians.
I decided to go ahead, but if a mob rises up and starts calling for apologies from Thomas Nelson and acting all offended and saying that they really can’t be saved if they put out such a book (Jana worried about their eternal destinations, but her tongue was in her cheek) then I’ll probably have to defend the publisher’s right to publish junk.
The truth is that if Jana had guessed at Thomas Nelson motives in publishing these, I’d not have linked to the review. That was what really bothered me about the criticisms of End of the Spear. Many people have apparently decided that ETE was motivated by greed and a desire to promote a tolerance of homosexual sin among Christians. Those were the remarks that bugged me. I don’t care if someone reviews a movie or a book and makes valid criticisms. But we shouldn’t assign evil motives to other Christians when we have no proof or such things.
The fact that Scripture is in someone’s hands is a plus, motives for the packaging aside. I don’t know what their motives were.
I stick with my original comment though. The Bible will seem most relevant when people of relevance are living it out. So ascribing the most positive motive–let’s attract more teens to the Bible–seems misguided to me. The Bible doesn’t need our help in that way. It needs us to read, listen, obey.
oopsy. I didn’t mean to say you were attributing a motive to them.
Obviously we are to always try to ascribe the best motive to our brothers and sisters. And so I agree that their motive is to be of help to teens–I’d guess it would to make the Bible relevant to their lives. That’s what I thought when I first saw these. Why have teens read teen magazines to get their answers to dating questions? Why not have the Bible speak to the issue?
According to Jana’s review, the zines miss that mark, though.
I’ll have to see for myself.
There’s no law that says you can’t have a magazine addressing teens and quote the Bible liberally within the pages. If we look at these as magazines full of the Bible, I guess we could get excited about them. If we see them as the Bible filled up with distractions and gewgaws, I guess they will look pretty disgusting. I’m not sure they haven’t trivialized the Bible and made it irrelevant–just one more voice, and an old-fashioned one at that.
The problem is probably that they are doing the Bible in chunks. The boys’ zine shown, has the New Testament, and the girls’ has wisdom literature. If that is the case then the sidebars should be commentary on the text, like a study Bible. Or they could have a magazine with all kinds of topics and then display scripture that related to that topic, like a devotional might be set up. But to have the Bible and the sidebars not match doesn’t make any sense to me.