Shades of Truth

Even worse than the questions about Dad, I realized I didn’t know what I would have wanted him to do. So who did that make me? I didn’t know Humphrey but Helen had known him. She’d loved him. What gave the hunters the right to take his life? I wanted to punch Mack in the face. Punch Jim. Punch Frankie and Ty and all the kids at school. My word study word was alive. What a joke.

Book: Shades of Truth by Naomi Kinsman, Zondervan (Zonderkidz) Publishing, 2012

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Target Audience: Girls 11-15

Subjects: Trust in God, Faith, Friendship, Relationship With Parents

Summary: A move to a new town isn’t the worst thing in the world. No that’s the feelings inside of Sadie. Death is everywhere. Is her mom alive anymore? Sometimes she seems more not-alive than alive. One bear has already been killed and if the hunters get their way more will be killed soon. It’s a war: the animal rights activists against the hunters, or more accurately, Sadie’s friends against the other kids at school. And she and her dad are caught right in the middle of it all due to her dad’s job as mediator. When she turns to her sketchbook she doesn’t see life. No matter how hard she tries, her pictures won’t show the life she needs.

Notes: This is the first in a series called From Sadie’s Sketchbook about a  seventh grade girl who has just moved to a small town at the edge of a forest filled with bears. Her dad has been sent as a mediator between the researchers and bear hunters. Her mom has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and their family has spent over a year trying to find a cure for her. Sadie hopes life will be a new start in this new place but troubles come up immediately. The series takes you through the trials she faces and how she learns to have faith in God even when it seems everything is falling apart around her. The spiritual elements are the focus of the book, but it is the climax – when Sadie reaches her lowest point and has no where left to turn, she finds answers from God.

Recommendation Scale: 3/5

Reviewer: J:-)mi

Acts 17:28 –‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’