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Children’s Book Review ~ My Name is Not Isabella

Posted by Professor on March 7, 2011
in Books, Family Stuff, Uncategorized

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

MY NAME IS NOT ISABELLA

I absolutely love children’s books…good children’s books! This is one of my favorites! This is a cute book… it encourages children to imagine and dream big, while inviting history into the story! I love that the story integrates famous women in history into the story…it allows children to imagine while learning about famous historical women! Some of the women highlighted are Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, Annie Oakley, and many more! The book is also full of wonderful illustrations to accompany the lovely story! Again, this was a wonderful book and I recommend it for any family!

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Angel Sister – A Revell Blog Tour

Posted by html404 on February 24, 2011
in Books

Angel Sister is a sweet story set in 1936, the Depression era, and is about the Merritt family. This family is struggling with some serious issues. Then along comes Lorena Birdsong, a little girl abandoned on the steps of a church in the Merritt’s hometown. Lorena’s mother told her to sit and wait for an angel to rescue her.

This book is about family, about life during a difficult time but no matter the time warp it can resonate a powerful message to all of us. When the going gets tough, families stick together. A worn torn war veteran, an alcoholic, a struggling marriage, estranged parents, children and grandparents, quarreling siblings, power hungry men and dictators are all a part of this story. Who among us does not know someone in one of these situations?

Then along comes a god-fearing angel with childlike faith to live out scripture and capture the hearts of many. This endearing story will make you cry. I know because I did. Love, forgiveness and perseverance are once again popular themes.

“Available February 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

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A Lady in the Mist – A Revell Blog Tour

Posted by html404 on February 19, 2011
in Books

I have been interested in birth since my first child was born. My interest in midwifery and home birth probably began at about the same time. However, the journey took several years to lead to my husband and I to experience our first home birth, and that was after having five children in the hospital and three miscarriages. So when the announcement of another Revell blog tour arrived, Lady in the Mist by Laurie Alice Eakes, I was definitely interested. As the first book in The Midwives series, this historical novel explores themes of identity, misperception and love’s discovery.

I really liked Lady in the Mist, but it was more about Tabitha, the midwife, her losses, relationship with God and her love life. Not about birth and midwifery, per se. The book did deal with the lifestyle of a midwife, how the community in that time period viewed a midwife (early 1800s) and a bit of history of Tabitha Eckles’ family with its legacy of women serving as midwives.

What I took most from the book was Tabitha’s struggle with God. After the losses she faced, she turned her back on God and stopped attending church. She was deeply hurt and unsure of how to go on with her life other than serving as a midwife. Not only did Tabitha struggle with her relationship with God but so did two other characters. Each of them were on their way back to Him, but it greatly depended upon the people, the circumstances of their lives and how each of them responded to the way God was dealing with them individually; that determined what role God ended up playing in their lives.

Lady in the Mist is filled with understanding of the human heart, intrigue and romance at a time in history when war was nearly imminent each day of these characters’ lives.

“Available February 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

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FFR Giveaway- Life Ready Woman

Posted by Bobbie Gould on February 17, 2011
in Books, Contests, Giveaways

And since no one else entered Karen won! Thanks to Karen for entering and to Lightfuse for sponsoring this giveaway!

Whether a stay at home; or working mom, an airplane-hopping executive, an empty-nester caring for multiple generations or a single juggling high demands of career and personal life, today’s fast-paced modern world leaves women gasping for balance. We as modern Christian women want to look to the Bible for guidance on how to manage our lives — but because the world of women looks so different today than it did when the Bible was written, it is hard to find chapter and verse that seems to apply to our situation today.

Thankfully, God has given us exactly that timeless, unchanging guidance for how to find peace, clarity, and God’s best for our lives once we know where to look! The Life Ready Woman: Thriving in a Do-It-All World, reveals a profound biblical roadmap for how each of us can find the abundant life we are longing for, rather than the stressful, torn, how-do-I-balance-it-all life we often feel like we are trying to keep up with today. Actually being a LifeReady Woman means that you are clear about your life, bold in your faith, and able to find God’s best for you, and the end result will be that you not only survive but thrive in our do-it-all world.

God has given every wonderfully unique woman different skills and abilities, different desires, and different temperaments — and every woman around the planet and through the ages is certainly living in different circumstances. But no matter what a woman’s life looks like, the Bible says that God has an individual mission and plan that He’s carefully designed for each of us. And He wants us to find it. Starting January 2011, The Life Ready Woman and the Life Ready Woman Video Series will help every wonderfully unique woman to thrive as she identifies and courageously pursues God’s unique design and callings for her. LifeReady Woman puts you on a roadmap to make decisions that will lead to relief, delight, and fulfillment instead of regret.

Enter to win a copy of Life Ready Woman!

Mandatory Entry: Tell me why you want to win.

Extra Entries (Please be sure and leave a comment and link for extra entries):

1 Entry:Follow Faith and Family Reviews On Twitter1 Entry:Like/Friend Faith and Family Reviews on Facebook.

2 Entries: Follow Faith and Family Reviews on Google Friend Connect (on the our right side bar).

2 Entries: Tweet about this giveaway, but only one tweet per day please. Include your tweet url with your comment. You may write your own tweet or use this one:

Giveaway: Enter to win a copy of Life Ready Women book http://faithandfamilyreviews.com/?p=7010 @faithfamilyrevw! Please share! Thx!

5 Entries: Blog about this giveaway and link back this post.

1 Entry: for every comment you leave anywhere else on this blog, but please leave a link with your comment!

Details:

This giveaway will run from February 17th-March 3rd at midnight CST. The winner will be chosen through Random.org. I will send one winner their prize. Winner will be contacted via email on or before February 10th and will be asked for their contact and other pertinent info. Winners will have 48 hours to send me their e-mail at [ffr] [giveaways] [at] [gmail] [dot] [com] (without spaces and parenthesis). Please note: This giveaway is offered to US only.

Thanks and have fun!

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The Life Ready Woman Blog Tour

Posted by html404 on February 17, 2011
in Books

Video Link: http://mediasuite.multicastmedia.com/player.php?p=s3k79xhw

When the opportunity arose to participate in The Life Ready Woman review, I thought it would be a good book to help me balance family, work and life in general. I was pleasantly surprised that it is not the book that helped me but the truths of God’s word presented in the book that assisted me in learning to accept my calling and the place God has our family at this time.

While I do not necessarily endorse every thought in this book, it does a pretty decent job of sharing what my husband and I personally believe our biblical roles are as a man and woman; as husband and wife.

The thing I appreciated most was the reminder that each of our families are called to do different things. We are not called to do what the Whites or Jones families are doing.

The key is for a husband and wife together to determine God’s wants for their lives, their marriage, their family, and to make decisions based on that rather than on worldly values–or even ‘church culture values.

In today’s society, we are pulled in all kinds of different directions and it takes much wisdom from above and input from our husbands to figure out what direction God wants us to go in. I am grateful for a husband who helps me from taking on too much outside of the home. We do not always get it right, but for the most part things usually balance out. What I really struggle with is working when I never planned to work. It was not until my husband was laid off three years go (don’t worry he’s back to work!) and we needed to figure out a way to make money that I discovered the entrepreneur buried within. I grew up being taught and believing a woman’s place was at home. When we got married Robert and I decided I would work until we had children, but after that I would be at home. All of that change three years ago and we are still learning to balance family, work and life. Accepting and appreciating where our family is right now is how The Life Ready Woman enhanced my life.

This book is sold through any major bookstore.

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Author Leisha Kelly Passes Away

Posted by html404 on January 31, 2011
in Books

I was part of a Revell blog tour last year of a book Leisha Kelly penned, The House on Malcolm Street, so I thought I would post the press release Revell sent this morning. So sad and tragic.

Grand Rapids, MI – Leisha Kelly, 47, was killed in car accident Tuesday night (January 25th) near Fowler, Illinois . Her son, 16-year-old Justice, was also killed in the crash. Kelly, a resident of nearby Clayton , Illinois , was the author of 11 books, among them a best-selling inspirational historical fiction series centered around the Wortham and Hammond families, set in Southern Illinois . Her most recent book, The House on Malcolm Street, was published by Revell in September 2010.

Kelly leaves behind her husband K.J. and a daughter, Hosanna. Kelly home-schooled her two children and served as a children’s ministry director and a youth minister at her family’s church. The couple had also recently become foster parents.

Vicki Crumpton, Executive Editor for Revell, who worked with Kelly since her first book, Julia’s Hope, was published in 2001 said, “I remember receiving Leisha’s first proposal in 2001. I read what her agent sent and called him that day to ask to read more of the manuscript. When I presented the proposal to our publishing committee, the team read the proposal and a few sample chapters. The first thing people asked was, “When can we read the rest?” And every time we received a new proposal from Leisha, people always asked, “When can I read more?” Leisha’s fans felt the same way. They always wanted to know when her next book would be out.”

“Leisha Kelly was an amazing talent. More than that, she was an amazing person, loved by family, friends, and her fans. Her unique writing voice will be greatly missed,” Crumpton said.

Twila Bennett, Senior Director of Marketing for Revell, remembers a story Kelly told her once. “She had a vivid memory of one of her first writing experiences that has stayed with me after all this time. She was young, it was the year that Mount Saint Helens erupted and she had heard the news stories about how the ashes might fall on other states. She felt a story burning in her and went out to her front porch and wrote and wrote. And then, the ashes from Mount Saint Helens really did indeed begin falling on her paper like snow.”

“I keep seeing that young Leisha now and look in wonderment at this girl, who overcame so much and gained the world on Tuesday with her son at her side,” Bennett said.

For more information on Leisha and her books, please visit www.leishakelly.com.

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Fatal Judgement

Posted by html404 on January 29, 2011
in Books

Fatal Judgement is a book about a US Marshal being assigned protection duty for a federal judge. While I have had the privilege of meeting a few lawyers I have not met a judge. I tend to think that being a judge or a lawyer would be a high pressured job with the fate of many lives being in the palm of your hand to make or break someone. It would be very hard in that type of profession not to tick off someone as someone is always a loser in a court case.

In Fatal Judgement, Liz Michaels discovers that she has a unknown enemy through a tragic event which results in her needing protection from a US Marshal Jake Taylor. This discovery changes her life.

This book kept me reading its dramatized plot, however, it was fairly predictable. What I took from the book is the difference between how Liz and Jake both processed the death of their loved ones. When we lose someone we love dearly, we have a choice to go through the grieving process and move on with life accepting God’s plan or we can get angry, mostly at God and become bitter resulting in turning away from Him when we need Him the most.

Not many of us will have enemies seeking to kill us, but ALL of us will lose a loved one and experience grief. And with grief comes the choice – turn to God or turn away from Him. Liz had learned to turn to God to carry her through life’s difficulties, whereas Jake was still hanging on to his hurt and grief. I believe there’s almost always an element of anger while grieving, but the key is not to allow the grief/anger snuff out your spiritual life. Prayer, reading God’s word all go a long way in lessening the anger aspect of grief. Again, as I said before in my review of Suzanne Woods Fisher’s book The Search, it takes faith to believe that good can come from something bad. This principle may be applied to losing a loved one. We have to believe that God will work out His good through the death of a loved one, even if it was premature in our minds. The key is focusing on special memories, the good and move on by the grace of God.

Another lesson that stood out to me is to never just blindly take someone’s opinion of a person and their character; make sure you get to know the person and learn for yourself what kind of person an individual is, in and of their own right. Their are too many things to jumble a person’s perspective.

Fatal Judgment is a crime mystery book that is an enjoyable read, with some rather serious topics to convey.

“Available January 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

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Special Promotions for the Book: The Search

Posted by html404 on January 22, 2011
in Books, Contests

Suzanne Woods Fisher’s latest installment of the Lancaster County Secrets, The Search, is just out and to celebrate Suzanne is hosting The Search iPad Giveaway!

One Grand Prize winner will receive an iPad Prize Package worth over $500 and includes:

A brand new iPad (16KB with Wi-Fi)
Signed copies of all three Lancaster Country Secrets books (The Choice, The Waiting, & The Search)

To enter, simply click on the icons below to fill out the entry form/s, then tell 5 or more friends about the contest. Oh, and enter soon! Winner will be announced on February 3rd at Suzanne’s Everything is Coming Up Roses Facebook Party. (Did you know The Search takes place on a rose farm?)

Facebook Party:

Join Suzanne for the Everything is Coming Up Roses Facebook Party on February 3rd! She’ll be announcing the winner of the The Search iPad Giveaway, hosting a book club discussion of The Search, giving away copies of all three books and HEAPS of other readerly prizes! Including roses delivered to your door for three months for you AND a friend! Be sure to join us on Thursday, February 3rd at 5:00 PM PST (6:00 MST, 7:00 CST & 8 EST) at Suzanne’s Author Page.

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The Search iPad Giveaway!

Posted by html404 on January 22, 2011
in Books, Contests, Giveaways

Suzanne Woods Fisher’s latest installment of the Lancaster County Secrets, The Search, is just out and to celebrate Suzanne is hosting The Search iPad Giveaway!

One Grand Prize winner will receive an iPad Prize Package worth over $500 and includes: