So Many Books; So little Time

Island of Saints

Island of Saints: A Story of the One Principle That Frees the Human Spirit

by Andy Andrews

c. 2005

I’m going to leave this one book as uncategorized because even my husband and I can’t agree what label to give it. The Dewey Decimal number is 813 which is non-fiction but is literature and not history. My opinion is that this work is probably a good deal true but my husband says the entire thing is a fabrication.

So, you need to read this book and decide for yourself whether this book is true or false.

A bit of background–Andy Andrews is an author who was orphaned at 18 and ended up not only on the streets but sleeping under piers on the beach. He had nothing and then he found his talent in writing stories for God. This is one of four books he has written.

The setting of the book is Andy’s backyard. He is digging a tree out and has his next three books planned out when he hits a rusted metal container buried in his backyard. He opens it and finds several objects: a picture of a man, woman and child, a picture of four men on board ship–one of them Adolf Hitler, a picture of a man, eight buttons, a medal, a ring, and a silver anchor badge.

When he investigated the buttons, badge, medal and ring, he discovered they were Nazi artifacts. But what were they doing in his backyard in a large metal can and who were the other people in the pictures?

And so, Andy goes investigating. Following his wife’s advice, he talks to the older folks on the island on which they live. He also takes a fresh look at history.

Andy discovers what most of us don’t know because the fact that Nazi submarines actually landed on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts during World War II is not in the history books. But it actually did happen that men in civilian suits speaking nearly perfect English came ashore for certain types of supplies and even consorted with folks who were in the war effort only for gain and not for the loyalty to the country of their birth and citizenship.

Laced between the investigative chapters of Andy’s book we find a fictional narrative of the way the story went down, at least according to Andy Andrews:

A German man with a conscience ends up on a submarine with a power hungry Nazi looking to make his way up the ladder. Both of them attended University in London before the war and our German upstaged the Nazi. Still seeking revenge, the Nazi arranges for our young man to be framed, put ashore and shot in Florida.

With nothing but his uniform and the few items including a picture of himself which Nazi law required him to carry, a family photo taken on his last leave, and a picture his tormentor gave him. Injured and washed up on shore, he runs into his worst enemy–a war widow.

Young and beautiful, this young woman works as a waitress at the only restaurant in the small town. She was widowed when her young husband was killed in London by Nazi bombers. She is bitter against God and the Nazi’s and the war effort in general. She hates all things connected to the war and wishes the worst for any German she comes across.

And so begins the story of a young woman harboring the enemy for instead of turning this young, wounded Nazi in to the local authorities, she cares for his wounds and gives him food, shelter and her husband’s clothing, all the while saying nothing to anyone including the employer she sees as her only friend.

This book includes a love triangle for those who like those things. It includes history for those who need to feel they are learning as they read. And this book includes a message of forgiveness that is absolutely timeless.

Fiction?? Non-fiction?? Creative license??

Andy, frustratingly, didn’t tell.

But, like Andy’s other stories, this one is uplifting and will make you think.

Happy Feet

I don’t usually review movies and I realize that this is a BOOK review blog but I don’t watch enough movies to warrent a blog to review them so this will just have to become my Entertainment Blog just like Hastings is an Entertainment Store even though that’s where I go to buy books.

Anyway, I was on the job today and teaching elementary music which usually means that I’m showing movies to the kids. Our principal is quite picky about what sort of movies are shown to the kids in that he wants nothing that isn’t rated G and even then he has some parents who don’t want their children watching movies. It is necessary for the kids to watch some educational videos over their time in school though.

But today I was just showing movies for the kids to have a day off. It was the last day before Thanksgiving break and the music teacher was gone so with me there, no actual music was going to happen. Had his wife been subbing for him, they would have been singing. And to break it up and because of the age range of the kids, I had several movies to show. Fifth graders were watching Tom Sawyer with an actor playing Tom who is at least my age if not older but was a small boy when the movie was made. Kindergarten and First Graders were watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving complete with a prayer over dinner. Second Graders were continuing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the original one.

But for Third and Fourth Grades I had a choice between Pete’s Dragon, Cars and Happy Feet. Now, I’ve seen Pete’s Dragon so many times I can recite along and it’s never been one of my favorite movies anyway so I nixed that one right away. Cars I have seen and I think it’s cute but I kind of wanted to see Happy Feet just to see what it was all about. And I’m sort of glad I did.

Now, since the classes are only 30 minutes long, it’s possible to watch the beginning of something so many times that you want to croak but as the kids indicated they had seen it before, I showed it straight through so I could see it. I had two third grade classes followed by two fourth grade classes so, for me, it was pretty much straight through.

I have to say that I was not impressed by this movie. In fact, I wouldn’t want my kids to watch this movie much less own it were they still small. There are just too many images that I question the motives of in this movie. And I don’t mean like Finding Nemo where the movie’s politics leaned so far to the left that it fell over. I’m talking about just disturbing images that should not be a part of a child’s thought processes.

For openers, the Emperor penguins sing to each other to attract a mate and I don’t know what real Emperors do but I don’t think they sway around and sing “You don’t have to be beaurtiful, I just want your body.” That to me was quite disturbing to show to young children. I also sub at the high school level and when parents and peers and teachers want to know where kids get these ideas I want to point them in the direction of movies like this one. Hello??? Kids hear this stuff and even though the parents of this young penguin stayed together which I’m betting real Emperors don’t, they weren’t attracted by intellegence or anything that humans should be attracted by (let’s face it, if they are going to have human personalities, kids are going to assume humans are suppose to act that way), they were merely attracted to produce an egg. Said so in the song, in fact. In my opinion those Emperors should either act like real Emperors or real people and not teenagers looking for the best sounding, best looking guy or gal. But that’s what the opening was.

Next, the mother, acting like a real penguin, goes off to fish while leaving the egg with the father. While she is gone the penguins band together and sing to the “Great ‘Guin” to turn the earth and bring back the sun in the spring. The Great ‘Guin shows up as a mystical penguin spirit that the males spend the winter singing praises to led by…….Noah, the spiritual leader of the penguins.

Noah comes into play later as the egg hatches and it becomes evident that the newborn penguin who is our “hero” Mumbles, cannot sing but tap dances instead. It is first determined that he must have private tutoring which he fails so he cannot be graduated so he’s not really a penguin. Then Noah questions the incubation of the egg and whether or not something went wrong. Well, the father dropped the egg but he won’t admit that until later when he is overcome with guilt and grief as Mumbles is blamed for the lack of fish and thus the starving of the penguins. Images of Israel worshipping false god and bringing punishment on the entire nation came to mind at this point.

So, Noah declares that Mumbles has adopted Pagan ways that he must renounce (his dancing) and learn to sing or be forever an outcast from Emperor Land. He has already been gone and found new friends in some rockhoppers with Latino accents who dance and collect pebbles and that just makes his Pagan ways more evident. Going along with that is his discovery of the “aliens” who have tagged a skua and left machinery and those plastic six pack holders and then he sees them netting fish. Mumbles claims (rightly) that he is not to blame but the “aliens” are.

Noah comes over as a relgious nut ready to burn Mumbles at the stake at this point as he declares Mumbles to be a heretic and in need of renouncing his pagan ways and so Mumbles goes off on his own to prove that he isn’t nuts. He ends up washed up on shore, put in a zoo where he tries to talk to humans, then insane until a little girl taps in rhythm on the glass of his enclosure. He then wins his “freedom” with a tracking beacon to lead the “aliens” (humans) to the colony of Emperors where he “converts” everyone to tap dancing and throught the magic of television, convinces all humans to abandon fishing around the continent of Antarctica.

Gag! I mean they have humans saying things like “what does it mean?” and “there was only one, now they’re all doing it” to “I don’t want to live in a world without penguins” and “do you think they want us to stop fishing?”

The entire scenario is nothing but liberal, anti-God garbage. I don’t particularly like fish and I do like penguins but PLEASE! And the whole “Great ‘Guin” thing was just flat out wrong especially when Noah calls Mumbles pagan. This isn’t even thinly veiled. This is an attack on God along with the regular Green Earth liberal garbage. I can take the liberal garbage but when you attack my God especially in a movie that promotes finding a mate just because you need their body and is geared toward young children, you have crossed the line.

Pass the word–Happy Feet promotes things that should not be offerered to the viewing of young minds.

And the next time I have a choice like that, we’ll watch Cars or Pete’s Dragon. They promote some real basic values. Happy Feet does not.

Hard To Believe

Hard to Believe

by John MacArthur

c. 2003

I like John MacArthur. I want to make that very clear before I start this. I enjoy his books and have grown spiritually from reading them. I enjoy them and his teachings so much that I own one of his study Bibles and read the Bible book of the month out of it along with the notes.

But (and I know that negates everything I just said), I had a problem with this book. I understand the concept he is trying to get across but this book is not to be started by the faint of heart or faith, in my opinion, because they might just quit before they get started–and not just quit the book.

John MacArthur digs into the depths of the book of James for this book. His precept is that faith without works is dead so that if all we do is make a profession of faith, it is meaningless. Now, I personally, have a problem with that. I believe that all who come to Christ with a contrite heart are saved. But I didn’t get the feeling from this book that MacArthur does. He sounds through much of the book as though he believes that if you get saved and then do nothing, you’re not saved at all. You are part of the goats who will be sent to hell. You are part of the group who claim to have known God and He says “depart from me, I never knew you.”

He doesn’t sound that way all through the book, I’ll admit. He does say that salvation is by grace and not of works. The works cannot save us but that we can’t have the faith without the works. And that if we are truly saved, we won’t want the faith without the works. The works will naturally come because of the love we now have.

Okay, I can buy that. I can believe that we will want to serve and work as soon as we receive but I don’t think that the verse means only what MacArthur is saying. I really think that those who are sent away at the final judgment are those who professed at CHURCH and not at the gospel. But I will admit that it’s possible that I am wrong.

Any comments from others who have read this work?

Behind the Personality

Behind the Personality, The Story of My Life

by Florence Littauer

c. 2003

I like autobiographies of Christians. They generally have so much to share about how God has blessed them and seen them through. I like to read them a chapter at a time in the morning as part of my morning devotions.

I read this book for two weeks before anything either positive or Christian happened. I was really starting to think that reading this book had been a complete and total mistake. This woman’s life was one of those perfect on the outside, hollow to the point of depression on the inside. The whole life was nothing but an invented drama for both the onlookers and the participants.

And then in Chapter Fifteen, Florence Littauer accepts Jesus Christ as her savior and embarks on a complete revamp of her life and her marriage. Her life goes from “of course I’m happy, I have everything I think I need to be happy” to “yes, I’m happy in the Lord.” Her husband goes from workaholic, never home Fred to “I take care of Florence” Fred.

And what a change it is. The two people who meet and get married in the first half of the book are nothing like the two people who live and love and minister for Jesus in the second half of the book. Fred turns his supper club into a church then sells it all and moves to California where he and Florence nearly lose their home to the California fires and have an opportunity to witness for God on television and in the newspapers.

This starts out as a disheartening book but it’s not. It’s just necessary for us to understand where God found Florence and Fred to fully appreciate the love and life He blessed them with. And along the way, we see what fully committed to Christ can do for all of us. It’s definitely worth the wait through the first fourteen chapters.

I have her book on Silver Boxes and I can’t wait until it comes time for me to read that one as well. It sounds like a Christmas study book to me.

Bill in a China Shop

Bill In A China Shop

by Katie McAllaster Weaver

c. 2003

Everyone’s heard of a bull in a china shop and what would happen if one actually got in there.

Well, meet Bill, a bull in a vested suit and bow tie complete with gold watch, top hat and cane. He LOVES teacups but alas, every china shop has a sign that says “bulls, keep out.” Until one day, Bill finds on that doesn’t. And as he browses, he finds a special teacup that he just HAS to have.

But, well, Bill IS a bull and he IS in a china shop.

This is just a fun book to read. It has rhyme and funny pictures. It brings to life an idiom that many children may never hear outside of literature. And it shows that some of us aren’t graceful and accidents do happen but friendship can appear in the least likeliest places from the least likeliest of people.

This is a book to be read again and again just for the fun of it.

Look Through My Window

Look Through My Window

by Jean Little

c. 1970

I was working for my friend Librarian the last couple of days while her regular aide had a new grandbaby and I passed by a book on the shelf that I had passed by many times before. There are lots of those actually but this time, the work was pretty much caught up and I was idly curious to see if I remembered it from my childhood in that same school when the book was new. It turns out that I didn’t though I am certain that I read it or at least considered reading it.

This book is absolutely timeless. It’s about real life. The main character, Emily, comes home to her apartment one night to find her mother gone. That’s never happened to her before. She is used to a quiet, predictable life. She knows what’s going to happen every day and where everyone will be.

And then……………

Her mother’s brother and his wife live on a farm with their four small chldren. And the reason that Emily’s mother was gone that day was because Emily’s aunt has tuberculosis and Emily’s mother has gone to volunteer to take the four children while she recovers. Meanwhile, Emily’s father is being transferred. So, from her quiet, predictable life in an apartment, Emily finds herself living with her parents, four cousins who break and swallow things they shouldn’t, and her uncle on whatever weekends he can manage in an eighteen room three-story house. Add to this an crochety elderly widow next door and a housegirl who speaks almost no English paid for by the widow’s neice (she thought she was paying her to take care of the widow), and a mysterious box Emily finds in her chosen bedroom, and you have the beginnings of a great story.

Emily hides the box from her family and tries everything she can think of to open it except destroying it. She learns in a rainstorm that the girls whose names are on the box are out of town for the summer so she ponders the type of people they must be and decides that they will all be friends.

And they do become friends in an interesting way. They are all writers of poetry and lovers of same. They are dreamers in their own ways and all misfits to a degree–Emily an only child thrust into the roll of elder sibling, Lindsay a youngest child with a college-age sister and retarded brother, and Kate who has one married sister and feels unwanted and unnoticed by her parents.

They become friends and they form The Quill Club and they write together. But in the process of writing and living and hanging out in Emily’s room, they learn about who they are and what friendship and prejudice are all about. They learn what it means to live and to love and to give. They learn a lot more about their parents than they had ever known before and they embark on a discovery of their inner selves that most people don’t reach till middle age. They understand that one person will say something that hurts but they don’t mean it to; they just didn’t know how to say it any other way.

And in the end, they understand what true friendship and love really are and that some families say it and some families show it and some families aren’t good at either but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist there. It just means that families are different.

I have only two complaints about the book for kids. One is that exactly one time the author uses the word “damn” and while it was an appropriate usage, I don’t think fourth graders (that’s the reading level) need to be encouraged by even one usage of the word. I was also shocked that it was there since I know how old the book is.

The other complaint is that there is a universal acceptance of all religions as equally valid. There is also the statement made in the book by Emily’s mother “the Jews invented God,” to which I object. If anything, God invented the Jews.

But I do recommend this book for reading and discussion between adults and kids. Despite these two objections, this work has a lot to commend it to our society. For one thing, all the parents in the book (there are four couples) are all married both at the beginning and at the end. For another, everyone is completely accepted for who they are and at face value. For another, there are none of the society ills visited upon any of these kids. There are no homosexuals or pedophiles or any sexual behavior or inuendo that you find in many books. There is no violence, no one is punished, and only once is someone actually hurt.

This is timeless literature for budding readers the way reading was meant to be. It’s able to stretch the mind without overburdening the dreams and turning them into nightmares. A special must read for girls.