Review
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Title: In the Garden
Author: Caralyn Buehner
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: Religion for children
Year Published: 2008
Number of Pages: 27
Binding: Large hardback
ISBN: 978-1-59038-403-9
Price: $18.95
Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle
Yes, yet another book for children celebrating the Easter story. This one focuses more on the artwork than on the story. The prose is lean, the illustrations effective but a little wooden.
In a review just written, I talked a bit about the importance of teaching children about the resurrection. I've always thought that spare prose and effective illustrations work better than anything else in teaching young minds to appreciate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But another thought comes to mind while looking at this book. Is it ever too early to teach children to love books? Let's face it -- television, video games, etc. have effectively turned our children away from books and, I think, kept them from developing a love for books. The very young, of course, can be controlled by their parents. And, in my interactions with very young children, it seems to me that the children naturally gravitate toward books as objects of wonder and amusement.
Parents can do their children a great favor by surrounding them with faith-building, character-enhancing books. And because the children can't read yet, this gives parents a chance to really spend some quality time with their youngsters.
As mentioned, the illustrations in this book will be, to the adult eye, a little stiff. Of course, it doesn't take much of an adult eye to know that even the animation on TV these days is inferior to the kind we grew up with. Oh, for an hour with Looney Tunes!
But there's nothing loony here. The kids will love the pictures and the story. The time for steering our children in the right direction is now. Books like "In The Garden" can go a long way to accomplishing this.
Jeff Needle
Association for Mormon Letters
jeff.needle@gmail.com<www.aml-online.org>
<www.LDSBookLovers.com/Needle.html>
