Between Shades of Gray

Summary--
In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina is preparing for art school, first dates, and all that summer has to offer. But one night, the Soviet secret police barge violently into her home, deporting her along with her mother and younger brother. They are being sent to Siberia. Lina's father has been separated from the family and sentenced to death in a prison camp. All is lost.

Lina fights for her life, fearless, vowing that if she survives she will honor her family, and the thousands like hers, by documenting their experience in her art and writing. She risks everything to use her art as messages, hoping they will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive.

It is a long and harrowing journey, and it is only their incredible strength, love, and hope that pull Lina and her family through each day. But will love be enough to keep them alive? (from  http://www.betweenshadesofgray.com/ )

Pro's--This book is the type that leaves you feeling as if all the air has been knocked out of your lungs. How could you ever enjoy comfort again without thinking of this story? It is a impacting story about a small nation, caught between several world powers all of who do not care what happens to the tiny country on the edge of Russia. This book was well written, realistic, and endearing.

Con's-- As a warning this book can be graphic but a mature reader would not be upset by it. Also, though  I do not remember any, there may be a very minor amount of language.

Five Stars. Ages 13 and up.

The Next Evangelicalism

It's true I haven't had a whole lot of to write for enjoyment at college, but I have been doing a lot of reading. (and a lot of writing about reading)

Here's a little bit from a book review on The Next Evangelicalism by Soong-Chan Rah:

Content:

Soong-Chan Rah addresses a rather sensitive topic about how to free the Church from western cultural captivity. He tears the veil off of the white church, revealing exactly what is, has been, and how it is affecting other churches and cultures across the world. Rah contends that the next big evangelicalism will be the rise of multi-ethnic churches as immigrants flood the United States and Churches grow in other countries. As the white church conforms with society, it shrinks, becoming less and less like the Church God intended it to be. The question is whether or not the white-church will wake up and embrace this new change.

My Reaction:

I greatly appreciated the above points that Rah made, especially about materialism, consumerism, and individualism. It is so prevalent in our society, yet we are so blind to how it affects our churches. I also greatly appreciated that when Rah speaks of western cultural captivity, he is not just speaking about racism, but a much broader range of problems. My eyes were opened to just how culturally trapped we are in our churches in so many aspects, even in the content of our songs and the architecture of our buildings. It was also very convicting how he pointed out that we try to reach for multi-ethnicity in our churches, but we do not change our leaderships. 

 Near the middle of the book, I began to get a little bogged down. Rah began to get a little repetitive, and I began to feel like he was attacking the white church, and fitting all white churches into this category. However, in all honesty, I think I was just being convicted. I appreciated that at the end he drew lessons we could learn from multi-ethnic and immigrant churches. It does appear that we have a lot to learn from them, even in attitudes of more joy and praise in our music instead of self-focus. In summary, I felt like this book was well-thought out and convicting despite the difficulty I had in getting through it.

Four Stars, Ages 16 and up (based on difficulty of read)

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

  Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet--Jamie Ford

Summary--Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago. (copied from Amazon.com)

Pro's--I really liked this book. It was well written, it was history and most of all it was about something I was not very familiar with so I learned from it. I knew that the internment camps during WWII were sad but I had never come face to face with just how ridiculous they were until I read this book. It was an eye opener!

Con's-- The only thing I didn't like about this book (spoiler warning) was the romance between Keiko and Henry. I understood that there had to be some strong and lasting connection for the children but I thought Jamie could have at least made them older.

All in all I would recommend this book for ages 13(an advanced reader since after all it is adult fiction) and up. Five stars.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Summary--This work was set in Berlin, 1942. When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But, Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than what meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences (from http://www.amazon.com/The-Striped-Pajamas-John-Boyne/dp/0385751532/ref=pd_cp_mov_0/186-1150241-5306607 )

Con's--I really can think of no con's for this book.

Pro's--I love the style of book that uses an innocent and unbiased child to portray in its fullest gore the injustice and atrocity of a situation most of us have gotten hardened to. That is exactly what this book does. I appreciated the way that Bruno innocently stated things that confused him, leaving out the gruesome details but allowing the more knowledgeable reader to understand what is really happening. This was a very good book with a startling ending! A must read!

There was nothing in it a younger child should not read but I do not think that most, under the age of 13 or 14, would understand the hints.

Ages 13 and up. Five Stars.

Cry, the Beloved Country

Summary--In search of missing family members, Zulu priest Stephen Kumalo leaves his South African village to traverse the deep and perplexing city of Johannesburg in the 1940s. With his sister turned prostitute, his brother turned labor protestor and his son, Absalom, arrested for the murder of a white man, Kumalo must grapple with how to bring his family back from the brink of destruction as the racial tension throughout Johannesburg hampers his attempts to protect his family.

Con's-- This is a book about an Anglican priest so there were bound to be a few things I disagreed with Bibilically. Other than those minor things I have no con's.

Pro's-- For me in a modern world this book was a comforting portrayal of finding peace in the midst of big city violence and terror and extremely depressing circumstances. It offered a heartrending picture of the struggle with right and wrong and healing and forgiving when all did not come out as one would have hoped. I loved the poetical, dreamlike style of the book and found myself reading it with more ease than an ordinary book.

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."

Five stars. Ages 13 and up.