Book Review of Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss

Stepping Heavenward: One Woman's Journey to Godliness by Elizabeth Prentiss

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a very inspirational book. I would highly recommend it to any young lady who is wondering how her life could make a difference. It is a story, written as the diary of a young girl growing to be a young wife and mother.



In the story, you see a great picture of spiritual growth, and what it can look like. The girl starts out kind of silly, focusing on the things most young girls like to focus on. Gradually, through her mother and her pastor, she realizes that there is more to life than clothes and friends and boys.



The book was written a long time ago, but is relevant for today in the area of spiritual growth. That part is really still the same. The story is sad, too. It made me actually glad to be alive today and not back then. Sometimes we think of those days as "the good old days." This books brings us down to earth. This is a great time to be alive, and I would not like to have to deal with the the things this lady dealt with, though they were commonplace back then.


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Living Math Monday: Anno's Magic Seeds

We read a second book by Mitsumasa Anno, called Anno's Magic Seeds. It is another good living book, and I recommend it. Mr. Anno has written several more books, and we are going to check into them soon. I might have to just give them a blanket recommendation if they are all as good as the two we have read.

In Anno's Magic Seeds, a man named Jack is given two seeds. One seed, he is told, will feed him for a year. He is to plant the other seed, and he will grow a plant with two more seeds on it. This way, he can be self-sustaining.

He soon figures out that he can improve things if he saves both seeds one year, and plants two seeds. So he finds some other way to eat for a year, so that in the spring he can plant two seeds. The following year, he has three seeds to plant (after eating one of course.)

This book very simply explores the concept of planting and harvest, showing the geometric pattern of increase each year. The watercolor pictures are beautifully simple. Again, this appears to be a simple picture book, but the concepts are much deeper. It would be appropriate for any elementary-aged child.

Living Math Monday: The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat

We had a week off this week, as the older kids were at Grandma’s. Today I will review another book recommended on the Living Math site.

The Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat by Theoni Pappas is a book of math activities that children will enjoy. Penrose is a cat that belongs to a mathematician. The mathematician is always working on lesson plans and mathematical drawings, and Penrose becomes interested in these papers. He dreams that the drawings and numbers come to life and talk to him. This part of the book seems awkward to me. My daughter was enchanted at first, she loves anything with talking animals, but it soon got old, and she didn’t end up finishing the book.

The book introduces higher math concepts, and each chapter is rather short, with activities at the end of each chapter. When needed, answers can be found in the back of the book. The activities are designed to be fun and to get kids thinking about the math concepts that are introduced. Sometimes I had to help my daughter to grasp the concept by paraphrasing what had happened before she knew how to get started on the activity. I didn’t mind having to re-explain the math concepts, but I think that part was a weakness of the book, where it could have been a strength.

We liked this book for the activities, but we found the part about Penrose the cat to be tiresome after a few chapters. We have found another book with some of the same concepts in a more fun, kid-friendly format. I will review that book next week.

Be sure to read my other Living Math posts.

Book Review of Little Lord Fauntleroy (with discussion questions and ideas)

**Edited 6/5/08 for layout and to make some passages clearer.**

Since I reviewed A Little Princess, I thought I would do another of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s books. This one is a story I remember from childhood, though I never read it. I saw the movie with Ricky Schroeder. I do not see it very often on recommended reading lists, but it’s not a bad book. A little annoying at times, though, and we’ll get into that shortly.

Little Lord Fauntleroy is about a boy named Cedric, who is the son of an Englishman, but Cedric is growing up in America. It seems his father, who was the third-born son of the Earl of Dorincourt , went to America and fell out of favor with his proper British father by marrying an American girl. The father refused to have anything to do with him. They were still estranged when the young man died, sometime after becoming a father to a little boy.

So here is Cedric, growing up like any American boy in the city. He is a quaint little fellow, and his best friend is a grown-up man who owns the corner grocery. But he plays with other boys, too. He is an attractive child, with long golden curls and his mother insists on him wearing lace collars and velvet suits. Remember this fact, because you will need it later! We see that the child does not mind this style of dress at all. He takes it all in stride and runs around and plays like any other child.

His life takes a sudden turn when he is identified as the only surviving heir to the Earl of Dorincourt. Yes, it seems that the older sons were not nice boys and had met an unfortunate end because of their wild living. They left no heirs, so now the Earl has to make contact with Cedric and his mother after meaning to never have anything to do with them. So his solicitor makes his way to America to get the little boy, who now has the title of “Lord Fauntleroy,” and bring him back to England, where he can learn to be an earl from his grandfather.

The solicitor notices what a unique child Cedric is and makes note of it. It is not just because of his distinguished style of dress, but what he does when given a gift of a large amount of money. He chooses to help his friends, rather than spending any of it on himself.

Here is a good point for discussion. What would you do if given a large sum of money? Cedric was already aware of a few needs around him, and wished to do something, but as a child he was really powerless. He was given the gift of power, and chose to use it to make someone else’s life better.

The money was not meant as a test for Cedric, to see if he would do the good and right thing. It was to give him a taste of how it felt to have a lot of money, so that he would not give them any trouble about going to see his grandfather. What does that tell you about the grandfather?

So Cedric and his mother go to England. The mother knows that Cedric will be expected to live at the castle with the grandfather, while she lives in a house nearby. Cedric doesn’t like that at all because he has never been away from his mother. The mother still is not welcome at the castle, since she is an American and the grandfather does not like her.

The mother decides not to tell her little boy about why she is not going to live at the castle, so that he will not form a bad opinion about the earl. What kind of character does this show? We are beginning to see more clearly why the little boy shows such superior character.

The Earl of Dorincourt is prepared not to like this little American boy, but Cedric begins to win him over even on their first meeting. Their relationship steadily grows stronger.

Throughout the book, we have been hearing glowing narrative about Cedric’s looks. Remember I said that the book is annoying at times? This is the annoying part. There are multiple references to Cedric’s appearance, particularly his hair. It leaves us wondering if Cedric is a virtuous boy who happens to be beautiful, or if perhaps the author feels the two are one and the same. Cedric’s grandfather is definitely influenced by his grandson’s good looks, but it is unclear whether that is meant to be a character flaw.

One nice thing about this book is that though we have the main character who is of a high social ranking, we see that other people in his same class are shown to be very selfish, foolish, and we might say undeserving of their station in life. It is also clear that Cedric, though raised in a very different circle before he comes to England, is more fit for his position than anyone. He owes this not to his inherited title, but to his mother, who is not nobility, but has noble character.

Cedric often does not understand his grandfather, but always believes the best about him. Even though this is partly due to his childish innocence, it ends up having a positive effect on his grandfather.

This story does open some good topics in character, particularly looking at Cedric and his mother. That is the most positive aspect of the book.

Older students might want to research a different topic related to this book. That would be the “pop culture” aspect. When this book was first printed, young mothers fell in love with Cedric, and for many years they had the desire for their little boys to dress in the same style as Cedric. The “Little Lord Fauntleroy” look was quite the fashion for a good number of years, much to the chagrin of young boys everywhere!

Book Review of A Little Princess (with discussion ideas)

* A good friend of mine who homeschools brought up the issue of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s philosophy/religion as a potential problem area for some Christians. You might read some background on Frances Hodgson Burnett to learn a little about this area.

A Little Princess is the story of a rich little girl named Sara Crewe, who is sent away to boarding school. Soon after that, she loses her father and her fortune. She is relegated to the position of a servant and is badly mistreated. Even with all these misfortunes, she manages to keep her spirits up, and show compassion and kindness to others.

One of the recurring themes in the book is friendship. When Sara comes to the new school, the little girls are fascinated at her luxurious room and expensive posessions, but they quickly learn to love Sara for who she is. She is a very imaginative girl and tells wonderful stories. When her fortune is gone, she is treated very differently, but after a while, she is able to see that her old friends are as confused as she is. They are under a great deal of pressure from Miss Minchin, the owner of the boarding school. It shows the strength of friendship that a couple of her friends are willing to risk getting in a lot of trouble just to see Sara for a little while.

Another recurring theme in the book is pride. Sara is able to withstand very cruel treatment, usually without retaliating. This is because she has a keen sense of pride. She imagines that she is a real princess and is better than those who would act cruelly to her. Her strength actually comes from a sense of superiority. As Christ-followers, we can see that this is not really a good motivation for behavior, but it is a very human one. This opens up a good area for discussion.

Compassion is another theme of the book. Sara seems to be a compassionate girl from the beginning, but living in luxury as she has, she has no way to truly empathize. When she experiences poverty, hunger, and loneliness, her compassion grows greatly as a result. This is a truly sweet part of the book, maybe dealt with a bit too neatly, but still appropriate and a very nice way to talk about compassion and putting love into action.

My oldest is nine years old, so I do admit to being picky about what books we read, but the truth is: all books are going to have their flaws. Right now I try to ask myself if there is an opportunity to discuss character issues, is evil or goodness ultimately rewarded, or does the book dwell too much on evil.

I did find two major problems in this book, and a couple of minor areas that might warrant discussion. The first is that Miss Minchin was really scary to my daughter. So much so that we had to put the book away for a few months. I think it was that she was so thoroughly mean and she was the ultimate authority, answering to no one.

The second problem was Sara’s belief in magic. At first, she is just portrayed as an imaginative child who imagines that dolls come to life when no one is in the room. Very cute, but this belief grows and grows through the book. When things go from bad to worse, suddenly Sara starts calling it “the Magic” and really believing that things happen because she pretends them to be. The whole time, the reader is allowed to see what is really happening in the background, but are we to believe that it is just a fortunate coincidence, or that there really is a Magic that made all these things work together?

The last two areas I will mention are not really problem areas. One is very typical for many books of the time period. It is worth discussion, however. Even though class distinction is meddled with through the book, in the end, everyone is neatly placed back in their original social cubbyhole. So it is not a rags to riches story, but a riches to rags to riches story.

And finally, we are to believe (in the opening chapter of the book) that even though Captain Crewe loves his daughter very much, he is forced, really, to send her to boarding school He is greatly grieved, but there is just no option for him. This would be an opportunity to discuss what choice might be made, and what options really were open in those days.