Mary E. DeMuth is a new devotional book just for pre-teen readers. The market is saturated with the Christian devotional genre for adults. There is a wide range of topics or focus areas for every interest, illness or socio- demographic. The devotional for young readers in an emerging genre. Many popular book genres in the adult world now have a youth counterpart, such as the widely popular secular series "Chicken Soup for the Soul".
What makes this book appealing to young readers is its visual presentation and its easy to read and relate anecdotes. The book contains 52 weeks worth of devotionals. Each week is sub dived into 5 week day readings and a weekend, hands on "to do" idea or project. The daily readings are short, simple and relevant for a pre-teen. They include topics on friendship, school, bullying and others. Unlike ateenaged devotional book that often focuses on "adult" themes topics such as dating and relationships, which would be innapropriate for a younger reader, this book is sure not to offend readers or their parents alike. The devotionals are supplimented with prayers, activities as well as biblical verses. This book is a hand on how to instruction book of applying the bible to real life, without the extenisive theology. The true to life anecdotes add interest and relevance for young readers to really see hpow the bible and God can fit into life.
The real test of this book will be to see the reaction of my 11 year old. One issue is that this book carries on the theme of the iShine bible series- available for pre teen boys and girls. This book seems to market the iShine bible. While I find the pocket sized ishine bible to be visually appealing, and the NLT is perfect for young readers, the extremely tiny 6pt font of the bible text is very difficult to read and in my opinion, a deterrent for pre-teens to read the bible. In fact the iShine bible is probably more difficult to read than a traditional "adult" bible. Young readers may be turned off and discourages by the compact pages of tiny, tightly spaced text. Basically I feel that young readers will read the shiny colorful bible insert pages, but skip over the bible text entirely.
As a blogger for I recieved this book from Tyndale publishers for the purpose of writing this review. My opinions expressed are my own.
I just read the sample on this one and it is in the style that I'm looking for. It has an interesting story, Bible study that relates to the story, prayer suggestions for the life application. I've read a few others and didn't find all of these components, but I'm hoping to find one that includes more of these than just one day a week. Do you know off hand do you know of one that has those areas?
ReplyDeleteMike.heim@me.com