Teens Archives | Page 2 of 3 | Little Book, Big Story

April 29, 2022 / 0 Comments

Sheltering Mercy

The Book of Psalms, perhaps more than any other biblical book, has a way of striking us right at our center. All of Scripture has this effect, to some degree. But for all their curious imagery, the psalms are written in language we understand: the emotion in them is raw, sometimes unexpected, and always deeply true. Reading them we are struck by verses that makes us think, “Yes, that’s exactly how it is.”

Not every verse strikes us that way, of course. Some strike us like stones. They knock our feet out from beneath us as we jog merrily along. But there’s something about the first-person perspective of the psalms, about their vulnerability and openness, that gives us words to say to God when we find ourselves stumbling.

Sheltering Mercy is a collection of poetic responses to the first seventy-five psalms: each one borrows language from the psalms and from the rest of Scripture in order to, as the authors write in the introduction, “harmonize” with the original psalm. These are not close paraphrases or neat translations, but responsive poems rooted deeply in the language of Scripture.

And these poems are beautifully written—I love that about them. But I also love how they model for us, and for our families, a particular way of interacting with Scripture. The poems in Sheltering Mercy show us what it looks like to sit with a psalm, to consider its connections to the rest of Scripture, and to respond to God through beautiful language. This book is beautiful both for what it is—a gorgeous collection of Scripture-rich prayers—and for the attention and care for Scripture it displays. It reminds us that the psalms are worth lingering over and invites us to listen closely—to say with the psalmist, and with the authors of Sheltering Mercy, “Yes, that’s exactly how it is.”

Sheltering Mercy: Prayers Inspired By the Psalms
Ryan Whitaker Smith & Dan Wilt (2022)

Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review it or compensated for my review in any way. I share this book with you because I love it, not because I was paid to do so.

March 4, 2022 / 0 Comments

Forward Me Back to You

After a disturbing encounter with a classmate fractures Katina’s sense of safety and peace, her mother sends Katina across the country to stay with a woman neither of them has never met—the great-aunt of her mother’s best friend—and try to recover.

Robin has been raised by his loving adoptive parents, but as he grows older he feels rootless. Everyone else wants to know where he’ll go for college, what he’ll do after high school. But he wants to know: who left him in the orphanage in India? How is he supposed to face his future when he doesn’t know his past?

Mitali Perkins weaves the stories of these two characters together beautifully, bringing them into fellowship with one another—through the wonderful medium of Viola Jones—where they challenge each other and help each other heal.

I had never read Mitali Perkins before reading this book, and I’m eager to read more—this was easily one of the best books I read last year. Forward Me Back to You deals with difficult content, but Perkins handles subjects like abuse and human trafficking honestly: nothing about this story is formulaic or predictable. Instead, Perkins allows Robin, Katina, and the other characters work through these challenges in ways that feel true and honest: they respond the way actual people might—with complex emotions, motivated by things they don’t understand in the moment and may not understand for years.

But Perkins writes with hope and with an eye on beauty and goodness, as well as truth. She brings her characters to a point of peace, but resists pushing past that to wrap up everything with a tidy bow. She gives them a way forward, and allows us to imagine what the path looks like from there.

This post is part of my “Hooray! We’re launching a book!” blog series, celebrating the upcoming release of Wild Things & Castles in the Sky—a book I both contributed to and, alongside Leslie & Carey Bustard, helped edit. Today’s post features an author who graced us with a powerful interview for Wild Things.

Forward Me Back to You
Mitali Perkins (2020)

January 28, 2022 / 0 Comments

The Sinking City

Liona Caravatti’s family belongs to one of the highest ranks in the city of Venice. Her life is comfortable, filled with little delicacies, affectionate siblings, and splendor. The one note in it that sounds off is her relationship to her father, which, though she doesn’t understand why, is different than his relationship with her siblings. While he dotes on them, his eyes slide past her, leaving her free in some ways to grow up as she pleases, but giving her nonetheless an ache that she cannot place.

Venice is a city of the sea—a city threaded through with canals, where the water is never far from the front doors of its citizens. It is beautiful, but the one note in it that sounds off is that of the Seleni, an ancient race of water-dwellers who retrieve pearls for the wealthy Venetians in exchange for a home in Venice’s waters. But the Seleni’s brine-like smell precedes them whenever they come on land, and the bargains they make with those wealthy citizens always come at a high cost.

When the Seleni intersect with Liona’s family, the city itself begins to crumble.

The Sinking City is a beautifully written story that weaves fantastic elements into the solid structures of a real city. Venice seems a plausible place in which to find magicians and wrathful sea monsters, and Liona surprises herself as well as readers as she navigates the city, trying to save it, her own life, and that of her family. The story is enjoyable and unpredictable, and Cohen’s ability to craft complex, believable characters is stunning: even the city of Venice feels like a character in the story—one with desires and personality. Her descriptions of the courtyards, canals, and alleyways of Venice make it feel as though her version of the city extends beyond the story; one gets the sense that just beyond the courtyard she’s describing, there are several more worth exploring.

There are some grim moments in The Sinking City, and for that reason I don’t think I’d recommend it for younger teens. But those moments are purposeful and they’re handled well—they suit the story and serve to show how high the stakes are for the characters. Just as Cohen’s Venice is undergirded with spells, The Sinking City is undergirded with themes of humility and sacrifice that play out in beautiful, nuanced ways. If the book has a fault at all, it might be in the ending, which places too neat a bow on a story that is otherwise rich and multi-layered. But I don’t hold that against it: this is a book I look forward to sharing with my daughters, and one I can’t wait to re-read.

The Sinking City
Christine Cohen (2021)

October 8, 2021 / 0 Comments

The Shiloh Series

We live in a world blighted by sin. This past year, we’ve seen startling markers of it: the day I first drove downtown last spring and saw the shops closed and the streets empty, I felt it. This is not how it was meant to be. But even on a day like that, when everything felt marred and twisted, I could hear chickadees calling and could look up and see cirrus clouds curling in the upper realms of the sky. The sun rose over the bay, enlivening our stilled city with its light.

But in Shiloh, the brokenness of the world is evident all the time, from any vantage point. The villages are ensconced in the Shadow, a darkness so palpable that the sky scarcely lightens even at midday. Most villagers have no memory of the sun; they do not believe it exists. But Amos’s father believes and, though ridiculed for it, he remembers: This is not how it was meant to be. Unlike most of his neighbors, he refuses to believe that the Shadow is all there is.

Helena Sorenson’s story begins in the dark, and it is a heavy tale, one that is honest about the damage of sin and the havoc it wreaks in our hearts. Her characters go on grueling journeys through the darkness of Shiloh, but the story is, as the back of the book promises, one of courage and hope: she brings the story to a glorious conclusion.

There is much to love about these books, but I was particularly enthralled by the mythology behind the land of Shiloh. The stories of the world’s creation and of the coming of the shadow gave me a sense that the world extended beyond the borders of the story, and that there were other stories happening in this world that hadn’t yet been told. This is something we need to hear often: in our world, too, there are stories still being told. God hasn’t finished with us yet.

The Shiloh series
Helena Sorenson (2013)

September 24, 2021 / 0 Comments

Rosefire

When I was in high school, I was hungry: I wanted a substantial meal. I wanted something true and lasting, and I looked for it everywhere. But all the books I read told me that this was it—the world around me, with its petty conflicts and scalding pain, was all there was. These books told me I’d better get used to it.

But when I was seventeen, the light found me. This isn’t it, he said. I am. He lit my way out of that dark room and seated me at a feast. I began to read the Bible and, within a few years, discovered Narnia and Middle-earth—expansive lands that rolled greenly in every direction, promising some new discovery just beyond each hill.

But as my daughters grow older, I find that so many of the books marketed to them continue to chant that old refrain: This is it. There is nothing outside this. Settle in and do the best you can with what you have. And so I look hard for books like Rosefire—books that stand as outposts of light amidst the young adult stories that celebrate darkness and would urge my daughters to submit to it.

In Rosefire, Carolyn Clare Givens tells a story that begins with one small action: Karan, daughter of one of the leading families of Asael, welcomes a girl with no memory of her past into her father’s home against his wishes. But this act establishes both Karan’s place and the place of the girl, Anya, in a story far greater than either of them—one that will shape and redeem their fragmented land.

Rosefire is a powerful picture of what it might look like to live out a prophecy—to know that one’s days are foreordained, but to see that the fulfillment of those days is unlike anything those living inside the story can imagine. Givens admits the presence of darkness in the world, but she shows light flickering at its edges and reminds readers that, whatever the other young adult novels say, the darkness has borders. Beyond it spreads an endless country, radiant and worth reaching, whatever the cost.

Rosefire
Carolyn Clare Givens (2021)

Category: Teens (page 2 of 3)

Sheltering Mercy

Forward Me Back to You

The Sinking City

The Shiloh Series

Rosefire

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