CONTEST CLOSED!

And our winner is Lori! Congratulations! I’ve just sent you an email, please respond within 72 hours and let me know your mailing address. We are in the city right now waiting for our baby to be born, but I will get this out to you once we are back home again .

I really like conversation starters that naturally lead to sharing my faith with those around me.  The Mend Mark bracelet is a great way to share your faith in Christ as a natural out-flowing of casual conversation.

Designed to represent the scars Jesus incurred on His wrists during the crucifixion, this one-size-fits-all stretchy type bracelet deposits a round mark on each side of the wrist.  With the word “REMEMBER” on one circular disc and “LOVE” on the other, this bracelet can serve not only to help believers share their faith, but also to remind the wearer of Christ’s sacrificial love – His blood shed on our behalf when we were still sinners.

Unfortunately, I’ve been wearing a double set of wrist braces full time for the past few weeks, so I haven’t been able to give the bracelet a thorough test run yet.  What I do like is that the jewelry is smooth – very important to me as a mom of little ones.  I can’t wear much jewelry when I’m breastfeeding a new baby because it snags and scratches, but this won’t!

However, wearers are warned not to stretch the band too much, because it is made out of a stretchy type of rubber I’m not too sure how well it is going to hold up for in the long run, it does seem a bit delicate.

The bracelet is very beautifully packaged in a gift box along with a brochure explaining the purpose of the bracelet, and that a portion of the sales are going towards the Living Water International project.

BUY AT CHRISTIANBOOK.COM OR FROM MENDMARK.COM!

CONTEST DETAILS:

I have 1 brand new Mend Mark bracelet to give away to one blessed winner internationally!   To enter, let me know who you’d like to win this bracelet for!

For additional entries:

1. Subscribe to this blog for updates – see the left hand sidebar. Leave an additional comment letting me know you’ve subscribed (or if you already subscribe).

2. Write a post on your blog promoting and linking to this contest. Leave an additional comment with a link to your post.

3. Add the Quiverfull Family button (see the code box in the right hand sidebar under BUTTON UP!) to your blog’s sidebar, or let me know if you already have the button displayed. Leave an additional comment with a link to your post.

4. Digg, Stumble, Tweet, Facebook or otherwise share this post on a social networking site. Leave an additional comment indicating how you shared this post.

5. Follow me on Twitter or let me know if you are an existing follower.

Each additional step taken counts for 1 additional entry. A total of 6 entries are available if you complete all of these steps. Please leave a separate comment for each entry!

The contest will close at 12 a.m. MST on Sunday, December 05th, 2010. One (1) winner will be randomly drawn for the Mend Mark bracelet on Monday, December 06th, 2010 and notified by email. Please fill your email address in the comment form when you are completing your comment so that I can contact you. The winners must respond with a mailing address within 72 hours of my email, or a new winner will be chosen. This contest is open to those living anywhere internationally.

I was featured yesterday as an interviewee for the Sower’s of Hope S.E.E.D. series.  It is a collection of interviews with women who cover in accordance with 1 Corinthians 11 – a practice that has greatly fallen out of favor in the modern church.

In my interview I share about how I started covering as well as some advice for women being led in this way.  Please drop by my interview there and be encouraged!

Few of us if questioned would claim to have our ‘emotional stuff’ all together.  I think that all of us feel like we fall short in the department of emotional maturity.  As believers a message we commonly receive from the church is to just get a grip on our feelings, but author Matthew Elliott offers us a way of exploring, rejoicing in, and bringing our feelings into line with God’s heart.

Elliott is bang-on in so many areas.  He tackles sermons that claim the love talked about in scripture is an action, a fact, not necessarily a true feeling, he tackles claims that the joy spoken of isn’t experiential but rather a mental assurance, the often spoken claim that all anger is a sin – he takes on these and other common teachings on emotion in the modern church and explores them in light of the scriptures and life.

Based upon his research for his more scholarly Faithful Feelings (I haven’t read it, but my interest is so piqued!), Feel is more of a consumer-friendly handbook version of his work for believers who are interested in digging deeper into their emotional processes in light of the scripture.  Written in a very modern, easy to read style, Elliot shares emotional experiences from his own life, and pre-readers of Feel also offer up their thoughts and first-hand relating to each chapter in the “Blog” section at the end of each chapter.

While Elliott does offer a set of ‘tools’ or a model to help explore and examine emotions, I felt these were too abstract for me to actually grasp hold of and integrate into my own life.  This was the weakest section for me.  The book’s strengths lie more in the pondering of Elliott’s points, and in his wholehearted belief in full-hearted Christian living.

Although Feel is written in short paragraphs and could easily be breezed through, it took me a long time to finish reading it.    I read it a page or two at a time so I could think about the insights Elliott offered.  There is a lot here to mull over, and Feel can certainly bear repeated readings.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT CHRISTIANBOOK.COM OR AMAZON.COM!

Our family has treasured our collection of Scholastic Storybook Treasures original Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics.  This fall a new collection – Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics 2 – jam packed with another 100 storybook renditions on DVD was released and has proven to be just as packed with value as the first collection.

For those unfamiliar with the Scholastic Storybook Treasures collection, each DVD includes an assortment of favorite children’s picture books on DVD.  The picture books (and their DVD renditions) range from the ‘70s to the current day and include a wide variety of presentation styles.  There are live-action renditions, fully animated versions, versions where a camera pans over the original illustrations to provide movement and visual interest, and so forth.  These collections are always eclectic (and that is GOOD!) and I’m always surprised by the new favorites my children discover.

There is really a lot here, and everyone can pick their own favorites.  I tend towards favoring the ‘classics’ like Caps for Sale, but I also liked many of the musical stories on discs 3 and 4, such as There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, and Frog Went A-Courtin’.  My oldest daughter (7) enjoys the zany stories such as The Emperor’s New Clothes (a version in which the emperor is drawn in the buff, cartoony style – not full frontal, but you can see his bum), Bark, George, and she LOVES discs 11 and 12 – this Miss Nelson and Black Lagoon stories.  My middle daughter (4) and youngest (2) are pretty flexible, though I do notice a lot of requests for the Black Lagoon from my 4-year-old.

As a family we don’t celebrate most Western-style holidays, so we’ve skipped discs 15 and 16, the Christmas and Halloween-oriented collections, but there is more than enough content by far to make up for these rare exclusions.

Each of the main title features includes optional read-along captioning that highlights each word as it is read by the narrator –great for beginning readers!  This is one of my favorite features, but this captioning isn’t included on the “Bonus Stories” generally speaking.

Seventeen DVDs are included in the box set, most of which have been previously released as stand-alone titles or in previous Scholastic Storybook Treasures sets.  If you already own the first box set – Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics – there are only two duplicate stories present in this collection.  In this second treasury there are included (the Amazon listing above this review isn’t accurate as of this posting):

DVD #1. Corduroy and More Stories About Caring, 60 minutes

-       Corduroy (this is live action!)

-       Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (classic!)

-       The Happy Lion

Bonus Stories:

-       I Love You Like Crazy Cakes (an adoption story)

-       Smile for Auntie (‘70s style eccentricity my children really dig)

-       The Happy Owls

DVD #2. Good Night, Gorilla and More Great Sleepytime Stories, 61 minutes

-       Good Night, Gorilla

-       Happy Birthday, Moon

-       The Napping House

-       The Rainbabies

Bonus Stories:

-       Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin (fun introduction to the orchestra)

-       Elizabeti’s Doll

DVD #3. The Wheels on the Bus and More Musical Stories, 67 minutes +extras

-       The Wheels on the Bus

-       Musical Max

-       Joseph Had a Little Overcoat

-       Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!

Bonus Stories:

-       All the Colors of the Earth

-       Keeping House

-       Hush Little Baby

Other Features: Spanish version of Musical Max (with captioning)

Interview with author/illustrator of Bugs! Bugs! Bugs

Discussion questions

DVD #4. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and More Sing-Along Favorites, 65 minutes

-       There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (sung by Cyndi Lauper, yes – really!)

-       This Land is Your Land (sung by Arlo Guthrie!)

-       Frog Went A-Courtin’

-       Over in the Meadow

Bonus Stories:

-       Giraffes Can’t Dance

-       Dem Bones (anatomical fun!)

-       The Chinese Violin

-       Changes, Changes

DVD #5. Is Your Mama a Llama? And More Classic Children’s Stories, 66 minutes

-       Is Your Mama a Llama?

-       – Noisy Nora

-       Each Peach Pear Plum

-       The Little Red Hen (traditional ending)

Bonus Story:

-       Reading to Your Bunny

Other Features: Spanish versions of Is Your Mama a Llama? and Noisy Nora, there is supposed to be a visit with Rosemary Wells (author of Noisy Nora and Reading to Your Bunny), but I couldn’t find it on my DVD

DVD #6. Giggle, Giggle, Quack and More Stories by Doreen Cronin, 84 minutes + extras

All of these stories are written by Doreen Cronin, we love her work!  Randy Travis does the narrations for all the farm titles.

-       Giggle, Giggle, Quack

-       Dooby Dooby Moo

-       Duck for President

-       Diary of a Worm

-       Diary of a Fly

Other Features: Spanish versions of Giggle, Giggle, Quack and Duck for President, Interview with Harry Bliss (illustrator of the Diary of series), discussion questions

DVD #7.  The Hans Christian Andersen Collection, 119 minutes

Some of these renditions are traditional, others are VERY modern, watch my notes.

-       The Ugly Ducking (traditional)

-       The Emperor’s New Clothes (traditional, nude emperor)

-       Nightingale (traditional)

-       The Red Shoes (very modern)

Bonus Stories:

-       The Little Match Girl (very modern)

-       The Swineherd (traditional, also included in the original Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics)

DVD #8. The James Marshall Fairytale Collection, 83 minutes

These fairytale versions are all retold and illustrated by James Marshall.  The stories are fairly classic modern retellings (what most of us are familiar with as opposed to the Grimm’s versions, The Three Little Pigs may be a bit different than the version you’re most familiar with (only one pig survives).

-       Red Riding Hood

-       James Marshall’s Cinderella

-       Goldilocks and the Three Bears

-       The Three Little Pigs

-       Hansel and Gretel

Bonus Story:

-       Space Case (about an alien visitor, Halloween setting)

DVD #9. He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands and More Stories to Celebrate the Environment, 60 minutes

-       He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands

-       Come On, Rain!

-       Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message

-       Owl Moon

Bonus Stories:

-       The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks (sort of morose, but a surprising hit here)

-       Patrick

-       A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog

DVD #10. Antarctic Antics and More Hilarious Animal Stories, 60 minutes

-       Antarctic Antics (very fun and educational, a new favorite find for us)

-       In the Small, Small Pond

-       Bear Snores On

-       Bark, George

Bonus Stories:

-       Caps for Sale (how can you not love it?)

-       The Hat

-       The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

DVD #11. The Teacher From the Black Lagoon and More Slightly Scary Stories, 59 minutes + extras

My four-year-old is a bit monster-sensitive, so I wasn’t sure how this would go over in our house, but it is a BIG hit here, and is often asked for.  These are all by Mike Thaler and illustrated by Jared Lee except for the last story.

-       The Teacher from the Black Lagoon

-       The Librarian from the Black Lagoon

-       The Gym Teacher from the Black Lagoon

-       Shrinking Violet (narrated by Calista Flockhart)

Other Features: Interviews with Mike Thaler and Jared Lee, discussion questions.

DVD #12. Miss Nelson Has a Field Day and More School Adventure Stories, 61 minutes + extras

If you’re in my age-range you’ll remember the Miss Nelson stories fondly from school.  My children really enjoy them.

-       Miss Nelson Has a Field Day

-       Miss Nelson is Back!

-       The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash (Steven Kellog illustrations, more memories!)

-       The Dot

-       Amazing Grace

Other Features: Spanish versions of The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash and Amazing Grace, discussion questions

DVD #13. Crazy Hair Day and More Funny School Adventures, 59 minutes + extras

-       Crazy Hair Day – (another top pick from my 7-year-old)

-       Petunia

-       How Do Dinosaurs Go to School? (written and narrated by Jane Yolen, my four-year-old really likes this one)

-       Monty

-       Will I Have a Friend?

Other Features: Spanish version of Monty, interview with Crazy Hair Day Author/illustrator Barney Saltzberg, discussion questions

DVD #14. So You Want to be President? And More Stories to Celebrate American History, 76 minutes + extras

We are Canadians, but there are still some great stories in this collection regardless of your nationality.

-       So You Want to be President (funny, educational overview of American presidents to date)

-       My Senator and Me: A Dog’s-Eye View of Washington, D.C.

-       Madam President

-       I Could Do That! Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote

Other Features: Interview with Lane Smith author/illustrator of Madam President, meet Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Splash authors of My Senator and Me, Presidential timeline, discussion questions.

DVD #15. The Night Before Christmas and More Classic Holiday Tales, 73 minutes

-       The Night Before Christmas

-       In the Month of Kislev (Hannukah)

-       Seven Candles for Kwanzaa

-       Too Many Tamales

Bonus Stories:

-       Max’s Christmas

-       Morris’s Disappearing Bag

-       The Little Drummer Boy

Other Features: Spanish version of Too Many Tamales

DVD #16. A Very Brave Witch and More Great Halloween Stories for Kids, 69 minutes

-       A Very Brave Witch

-       By the Light of the Halloween Moon

-       A Dark, Dark Tale

-       Georgie

Bonus Stories:

-       The Witch in the Cherry Tree

-       The Three-Legged Cat

-       The Three Robbers

-       Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain

DVD #17. Ralph S. Mouse Based on the Book by Beverly Cleary, 85 minutes + extras

-       Ralph S. Mouse

Bonus Stories:

-       Stanley and the Dinosaurs (also included in the original Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics)

-       Uncle Elephant

Interestingly, all of these stories are live action (Ralph is a furry puppet style mouse with a human cast) or claymation style, another favorite DVD of my oldest.

Other Features: Discussion questions

There are also some improvements that make the collection much easier to use for parents.  An alphabetical index is included on a separate sheet that lists each story alphabetically, then shows the title of the collection it is included on as well as the disc number.  This is so helpful when you don’t have the contents of the DVDs memorized as well as your children do and they ask for a specific title!

The 100 storybooks are presented in a very compact collection of 17 DVDs, collected according to theme (or sometimes author), often with two discs to a DVD case, making this collection economical on shelf-space as well as the pocketbook!

With 19 hours+ of high-quality children’s programming and over 50 children’s literature awards between the collected titles, this is such a great collection!  I love it when storybooks are faithfully rendered in DVD format, the content and language is much richer than you find with mainstream children’s programming, and these titles are proven winners!

This collection is very diverse, whether you are a primary-level educator (we are homeschoolers, and I love the Spanish versions, captioning, and how many of the titles are classics we use as read-alouds for literature), a parent, or a grandparent looking for a great gift idea, I can only imagine that these discs will be warmly and enthusiastically received by any child in the 2 – 9 age range.

I know I’ve gone through the collection by DVD, but if you prefer an alphabetical story-listing (looking for a favorite tale?) then here is one for you:

All the Colors of the Earth

Amazing Grace

Antarctic Antics

Bark, George

Bear Snores On

A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog

Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!

By the Light of the Halloween Moon

Caps for Sale

Changes, Changes

The Chinese Violin

James Marshall’s Cinderella

Come On Rain!

Corduroy

Crazy Hair Day

A Dark, Dark Tale

The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash

Dem Bones

Diary of a Fly

Diary of a Worm

Dooby Dooby Moo

The Dot

Duck for President

Each Peach Pear Plum

Elizabeti’s Doll

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Frog Went A-Courtin’

Georgie

Giggle, Giggle, Quack

Giraffes Can’t Dance

Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Good Night, Gorilla

Goose

The Gym Teacher from the Black Lagoon

Hansel and Gretel

Happy Birthday, Moon

The Happy Lion

The Happy Owls

The Hat

He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands

How Do Dinosaurs Go to School?

Hush Little Baby

I Could Do That! Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote

I Love You Like Crazy Cakes

In the Month of Kislev

In the Small, Small Pond

Is Your Mama a Llama?

Joseph Had a Little Overcoat

Keeping House

The Librarian from the Black Lagoon

The Little Drummer Boy

The Little Match Girl

The Little Red Hen

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain

Madam President

Max’s Christmas

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

Miss Nelson Has a Field Day

Miss Nelson Is Back!

Monty

Morris’s Disappearing Bag

Musical Max

My Senator and Me: A Dog’s Eye View of Washington, D.C.

The Napping House

The Night Before Christmas

Nightingale

Noisy Nora

Over in the Meadow

Owl Moon

Patrick

Petunia

The Rainbabies

Ralph S. Mouse

Reading to Your Bunny

Red Riding Hood

The Red Shoes

Seven Candles for Kwanza

Shrinking Violet

Smile for Auntie

So You Want to Be President?

Space Case

Stanley and the Dinosaurs

The Swineherd

The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks

The Teacher from the Black Lagoon

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

This Land Is Your Land

The Three Little Pigs

The Three Robbers

The Three-Legged Cat

Too Many Tamales

The Ugly Duckling

Uncle Elephant

A Very Brave Witch

The Wheels on the Bus

Will I Have a Friend?

The Witch in the Cherry Tree

Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin

Spanish versions of:

Amazing Grace

The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash

Duck for President

Giggle, Giggle, Quack

Is Your Mama a Llama?

Monty

Musical Max

Noisy Nora

Too Many Tamales

There are also the additional interviews, discussion questions etc. as listed above by DVD.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT AMAZON.COM!

The City of Tranquil Light is the first work of historical fiction I’ve read that focuses on the lives of a missionary couple, and it’s a truly lovely novel.  Based upon the events of the author’s maternal grandparents lives as missionaries in China in the early 19^th century, Bo Caldwell has penned a work that I only wish was longer so that more detail could be included!

Told in straightforward prose The City of Tranquil Light is nonetheless a fascinating read.  The characters are vividly drawn out through Will’s first person accounts and Katherine’s infrequent diary entries and I found myself thinking of their work often throughout the day when I wasn’t reading.

Their story is a love story in the best sense of the word.  It isn’t necessarily a romance in that their love is simple, faithful, and relatively free of conflict while being filled with support, but their care for one another is evident throughout the book.  It is also a love story between them and a place – China; between them and the people they were called to serve through difficult and painful times.

Fitting most of an adult life into 300 pages is a tricky feat – readers are given viven snapshots of landmark/watershed moments while many years are passed over to focus in on other high-drama moments in the lives of missionaries working within a turbulent country.

In particular I would have loved to read more about the efforts of their evangelism, as their church did grow to be quite large, and somewhat less of their medical efforts in the field and clinic.  It also becomes clear that the Kiehn’s lives don’t entirely mirror that of Caldwell’s grandparents, and I would have appreciated more historical notes about where the specific similarities and differences lay.  There are also some moments in the conclusion when the author’s voice seems to take over from Will’s, but that is a minor concern.

The City of Tranquil Light is easily one of the very best works of historical fiction I’ve read this year.  Both emotionally moving while still being down-to-earth, Caldwell strikes a unique balance that I’ve yet to find within the (typically) heavily romance-oriented genre of Christian historical fiction.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT AMAZON.COM!

Demon’s-eye-view novels aren’t entirely uncommon in the world of Christian fiction.  Tosca Lee however has a knack for adding something special to even stories that seem old, which seem ‘done’, like a cliché.  Her rich prose strikes the perfect balance between lyricism and clarity bringing rich word images to life on the printed page.  She makes me think, every time, and Demon: A Memoir is no exception.

Clay is an editor and published author whose works never succeeded commercially.  A recent divorcee, he finds himself mired in a life that lacks direction, purpose, or color.  When a mysterious creature named Lucian enters his life and begins telling him a story that burns to be told, Clay finds himself writing with renewed fervor as the early days of creator are laid out for him from a demon’s-eye-view.

What makes Lucian’s revelations so unique isn’t their point of view (which I’ve read before), but rather the conclusions that are formed out of that point of view.   Conclusions that contrast man with the angels, which compare God’s treatment of the two creatures when they respectively fall, and contrast His ultimate plans for both of them.

This is the main aspect that makes Demon such a worthwhile read.  Compelling prose aside, these breathtaking insights into God’s love from the viewpoint of the fallen enemy are utterly spellbinding.

As a brief warning – readers looking for a decisive, definitive ending may be disappointed with Demon’s conclusion, but Lee is asking readers to make their own choice, to write the end of their own story, just as Clay must do.  Those open to pondering for themselves, open to living in the question will enjoy this absorbing novel and the skill with which Lee draws out the question itself.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT CHRISTIANBOOK.COM OR AMAZON.COM!

When The Case of the Crooked Carnival showed up in our mailbox I wasn’t sure what to think.  I hadn’t had any previous experience with the series (of which this is the fifth), but my seven-year-old latched onto the book and wouldn’t let go.  I found her paging through it at all times of day, and though her reading skills weren’t quite up to tackling it as a read-alone she did try to read it, she was so motivated.

When I read it to her as a read-aloud she was continually begging for another chapter, commenting on how exciting the book was and how interesting.  Combining science with mystery and detective work, Michele Torrey has created a winner with the Doyle and Fossey series.

The ten brief chapters divide into four short mysteries that can be treated as stand-alones, though they are presented in a typical chapter-book format rather than being divided into separate tales. Barbara Johansen Newman liberally provides playful black and white illustrations alongside the text to pique the interest of young readers.

Doyle and Fossey investigate a ‘haunted house’, deal with an invasive plant species, de-bunk a suspicious carnival game, and save the town from a bridge gone wild!  The scientific concepts integrated into the stories is elaborated upon further in the “Activities and Experiments for Super-Scientists” section which provides hands-on science activities that flesh out the concepts and introduce young readers to the scientific method.

My daughter is eagerly anticipating the addition of future Doyle and Fossey titles to our home library.  If your child is into the “mystery-series” stage of reading, she (and therefore I) can’t recommend this series highly enough.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT AMAZON.COM!

This is a Mama Buzz review. The product was provided by Tyndale for this review.

Though Adventures in Odyssey (AIO) has been around for over 20 years, Cause & Effect is the first of their 52 releases that our family has had the pleasure of listening to!  These wildly popular audio CD sets recreate the feel of old-time radio-drama on CD (they are actually played on the radio as well if you can find them near you), and this set has over five hours of listening on it with 12 stories that focus attention on morals and behavior that honor God.

Now, my seven-year-old is definitely an audio-oriented girl, and she has been camped out around our laptop (I can’t find our CD player cord) for the past few days listening to these stories again and again while she works on various drawings and other projects.  My four-year-old also camps out beside her when one of her favorite stories is on.  My two-year-old still doesn’t have the attention span for the discs, but my older children can listen to them almost ALL day long, it’s amazing.

One of their favorite things about AIO is the mystery factor.  Their favorite stories from the collection are “The Mystery of the Clock Tower” and “Stage Fright” which are the most detective-oriented stories from the collection.  Other stories include: “Wooton’s Broken Pencil Show”, “Fast As I Can”, “Opposite Day”, “The Owlnapping”, “Square One”, “A Thanksgiving Story”, “An Agreeable Nanny”, “The Malted Milkball Falcon”, and “Grandma’s Christmas Visit”.  The morals emphasized include fasting, trust, being thankful, responsibility, and many more.  There is also a bonus movie clip on the first CD that takes children inside a sound effects studio to see how they recorded one of the scenes from the collection.

I think the only true miss in the collection was “Wooton’s Broken Pencil Show”, it was too chaotic, and though it tried to make a point by not having a point (trying to guide children into seeking entertainment with meaning), my children just wandered away.  There wasn’t enough of a story line to hold them.

When I asked my little ones exactly why they like Cause & Effect so much they said it was because it was, “So exciting!” (my 7-year-old), and, “Because the stories are so interesting!” (my 4-year-old).  Now, I have girls, but I think that these stories are really good for both genders, which can be tough to find in stories, there is a good balance of characters both male and female of different ages, which makes the series great for family listening.

You can find more details about this 4-CD audio set at the Tyndale website.

It retails for $24.99 but you can find it online for around $15.00 at CHRISTIANBOOK.COM or AMAZON.COM!  Downloadable MP3 versions are also available online.

You can also find Tyndale online on Facebook and Twitter.

To see what other reviewing moms thought about Cause & Effect, visit the Mama Buzz website!

CONTEST CLOSED!

Congratulations to Shawna!  You are the winner of A Path Less Traveled!  Please respond to my email within 72 hours, so we can get this book out for you!

I’m excited to be hosting another giveaway for a Cathy Bryant title!  A while ago we gave away a copy of her first novel – Texas Roads – here at Quiverfullfamily.com, and she has kindly offered a copy of the sequel – A Path Less Traveled – in the winner’s choice of e-book or print copy!

So, here’s what the story is about!

Trish James is tired of being rescued. When a spooked horse claims her husband’s life, she’s determined to blaze a path for herself and her traumatized son without outside help. But will that mean leaving the place etched on her heart?

Andy Tyler has had to struggle for everything, and starting a new law practice in Miller’s Creek, Texas is no different. Though prepared for business challenges, he’s not prepared for falling in love–especially with yet another woman who will probably abandon him for her career.

Will Andy and Trish be able to see past their limited human understanding to take a path less traveled?

To read the first chapter, click here!

And here is some information about Cathy!

Cathy Bryant is a former public school teacher who handed in her chalk for a private music studio and writing career. Her passion is to write heart-stirring stories that show God’s life-changing grace. Cathy is the owner of the popular blog, WordVessel, and has written devotions for The Upper Room magazine, two devotional books, and online devotional sites. She’s the wife of a music minister, the mother of two grown sons and a beautiful daughter-in-love, and the Nana of Harrisen. A Texas gal since birth, she lives in a century-old Texas farmhouse with her husband and a phobia-ridden cat.

Texas Roads (her debut novel and a 2009 ACFW Genesis finalist) released in March 2010. The second Miller’s Creek novel, A Path Less Traveled, was launched in November 2010. The Way of Grace will be available in 2011.

Visit her website at www.CatBryant.com

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT AMAZON.COM IN PRINT OR E-BOOK!

CONTEST DETAILS:

I have 1 copy of A Path Less Traveled to give away to one blessed winner in the US or Canada!  The winner gets their choice of an e-book or print copy.  To enter, let me know why you’d like to win Cathy’s latest novel!

For additional entries:

1. Subscribe to this blog for updates – see the left hand sidebar. Leave an additional comment letting me know you’ve subscribed (or if you already subscribe).

2. Write a post on your blog promoting and linking to this contest. Leave an additional comment with a link to your post.

3. Add the Quiverfull Family button (see the code box in the right hand sidebar under BUTTON UP!) to your blog’s sidebar, or let me know if you already have the button displayed. Leave an additional comment with a link to your post.

4. Digg, Stumble, Tweet, Facebook or otherwise share this post on a social networking site. Leave an additional comment indicating how you shared this post.

5. Follow me on Twitter or let me know if you are an existing follower.

Each additional step taken counts for 1 additional entry. A total of 6 entries are available if you complete all of these steps. Please leave a separate comment for each entry!

The contest will close at 12 a.m. MST on Wednesday, November 24th, 2010. One (1) winner will be randomly drawn for A Path Less Traveled on Thursday, November 24th, 2010 and notified by email. Please fill your email address in the comment form when you are completing your comment so that I can contact you. The winners must respond with a mailing address within 72 hours of my email, or a new winner will be chosen. This contest is open to those living in the US/Canada.

It’s been a while since a Bible reading update, and it’s official – I DIDN’T make it through the entire Bible in a year, but I DID make it through the Old Testament in a year!  Right now I’m reading through the synchronized gospels in my Narrated Bible and am reading through Jesus’ years of active ministry.

So, I’m still plugging away, though my consistency has suffered again from the move/renovations/getting ready for new baby/pregnancy fatigue. Hrmph.  In any case, I’m still reading the Bible at a faster pace than ever before, and have read more if it than ever before, so I’m still very happy!