Seasons Books

The Giant is a gorgeous book. The language and illustrations work together to create a mood and a story that children will love, and adults will be glad to read over and over again. For any child who may be suffering the loss of someone important, the story brings the additional gift of gently suggesting a way of finding the "true giants" in our lives, those people who are constant and steady for us because they love us. I've read this book many times, and the last page still brings me to tears every time.

A great Fathers day gift for people of all ages who want to let their fathers know they are "Giants."

The Giant is beautifully illustrated and describes past farm life with clarity. My granddaughter loves this book (as do I). I'm pleased it has been added at our local library.

The Giant is a masterpiece, combining beatiful illustrations with evocative language to create a book that children will love and adults won't mind reading over and over, even if the final page brings tears every time. The story follows a child who has lost her mother as she gradually comes to recognize her father as "the giant" who is taking care of her.

The book will be loved by all children, but will be especially important to children who have lost loved ones as they come to recognize the Giants in their own lives. It would make a wonderful father's day gift for people of all ages who want to recognize their own fathers as Giants.

This is simply one of the loveliest books I've ever seen! When I saw that Ric Ergenbright, one of my favorite photographers, made a book dedicated to this glorious season, I couldn't resist getting the book immediately and I am so thankful that I did.

This book celebrates Christmas in every way imaginable: along with Ergenbright's gorgeous pictures of the winter season, there are Scripture quotes, touching Christmas stories, and the lyrics of ten classic Christmas hymns gorgeously presented. At the end of each hymn, Ergenbright writes words explaining the import of the hymns and beautiful short prayers for the reader to take with them. There's also a CD inside, featuring all ten of the hymns in the book newly recorded.

This book is the perfect gift for family, friends, or your own heart. It beautifully presents all the glory of the season and God's goodness in making it. I bought it in August, and after reading it, even in midsummer I couldn't get the words of Christmas hymns out of my head! Highly recommended!

An inspirational book which helps to remind us of the "true" meaning of Christmas. The stories will touch your heart and boost your spirit. The CD which comes with the book, contains many favorite Christmas carols. The songs are equisitely done. This book will help everyone get into the "Spirit" of Christmas. A must for the Holiday Season.

The book combines heartwarming stories, Christmas carols and Scripture references that helped me to realize the many facets of the gift of Christ's birth. This book is a perfect coffee table type book to be brought right after Thanksgiving. The short stories will help to remind you of the true meaning of Christmas. The book comes with a CD of Christmas classics.

This would be a terrific book to use in a classroom unit on seasons before the use of calendars, telling the time of year with the signs from nature. Team it up with Thirteen Moons on Turtles Back (Joe Bruchac) and you have a winning combination for grades 1-5.

Imaginatively written by Carolyn Arden and beautifully illusrated by Jim Postier, Goose Moon is the highly recommended thoroughly entertaining, heartfelt picturebook story of a young girl and her adventures on Grandfather's farm over the seasons.

Goose Moon is a great illustration that warm and comforting literature can still be written for children today. The bond between Grandfather and granddaughter is realistic and the anticipation and wonder felt as one reads the story and takes in the illustrations.

The story and the depiction of it blend beautifully. A true keeper for any child's library.

Grandma's Purple Flowers is a tender, loving story of a child's attachment to her grandmother, who she loves to pick purple flowers for, and the closeness they share. They discuss the changing of seasons and how the leaves fall and flowers die-everything has its time. Then one night her grandmother dies. The child grieves, but soon realizes that when the purple flowers bloom they remind her of her grandmother. The illustration of the seasons is beautiful.

I read this book at the library to my 3 daughters. It started conversation around the coming death of my mother, their grandmother. She is terminally ill with cancer and she has a short time here with us. This book helped my girls to see that even though it may hurt to not see their grandma again they can cherish the good memories they have of her. I would reccommend this book to anyone who wants to prepare a child for loss of a loved one.

Using vibrantly colored collages, author/illustrator Adjoa Burrowes (illustrator of "My Steps," a Parent Choice Award winner) offers young readers not only a warm intergenerational story about a young girl and her grandma, but a look at how Hyacinth works her way through her grandma's death. Enhanced with acrylics and watercolors, the three dimensional effect of the pictures will give readers the feeling of traveling along with Hyacinth as she goes through the park and down the hill to regularly visit her grandma. "A big hug and a smile are always waiting" for her. She gives grandma purple flowers that she has picked along the way and grandma offers her sweet corn muffins. Hyacinth enjoys the freedom of making the journey through the park as much as she enjoys doing simple activities with grandma - baking and hair combing. While raking leaves, Hyacinth asks her grandma, "Why do leaves have to fall and die?" Grandma replies, "Everything has its time." One winter day, Hyacinth visits her grandma and finds her ill. Grandma eventually dies and the young girl cries and mourns her beloved grandparent all winter. She must find a way to overcome her grief. In the spring, she finds a way to cope with her loss. In a youthful manner, Burrowes' illustrations match the mood shifts of the story, from exuberant with smiling houses, to sorrowful with an empty park bench surrounded by dirty gray snow. There are many fanciful details in the illustrations as well as subtle ethnic details in the story. This is an important book about the natural life cycle and coping with death. It parallels the seasons and the growth cycle of plants. Burrowes handles this subject with confidence and with an updated feel by using an African-American family.

This book kept me up all night, and I arose glowing with the warmth and depth of these beautiful poems. These poems have a quietness about them, an inwardness, and yet they invite the reader to enter into them. I read them when I want to fall in love with my own life again. Probably my favorite book of poems ever.

I have just moved and the one book I have been searching for in my mountain of boxes is this book. I haven't been able to find it yet and cannot wait any longer for the inspiration it gives me. Paul Matthews has a lively genius that visits him inside his head and he is able to hear all the wonderful promptings that the genie brings him. His other book, Sing Me The Creation is equally wonderful for helping all of us activate our imagination and creativity.

curl up with this these poems and enjoy...simply wonderful

I Don't know anything about this book really. But the author of this book is a Wonderful!! Teacher!

Paige
Kirsten
Nikki
Britney

My friend and I love this book. It is not only for girls it is for boys too. And my friend and I's names are Katie and Alex,just like the book!! It was especially helpful to me because it seems to show the bright side of everything. I can also really relate to the main character. It is not an "obvious ending book", you know like parent trap. YEEESH! It is full of adventures and a little romance. I love this book because when
katie thinks things are taking a turn for the worse, she finds an unexpected understanding of the situation and decides, maybe eveything will be okay. This is the story of Katie Newman and how much she grew over the summer of her life.

From the cover, this book looks as though it's just for girls, but there's a teenage boy in it, too (actually, there are two). These kids get in all kinds of trouble over a summer where they're in situations they don't like. I think this book shows readers that kids have more power and control over their lives than they think they do--and they can make a difference in the world, or at least their part of it. Great flying scenes, caving scenes, and other adventures keep readers turning pages.

HEALING LITURGIES FOR THE SEASONS OF LIFE, by Abigail Rian Evans embodies the scholarly passion for healing and wholeness in the church presented so well in Professor Evans' classic THE HEALING CHURCH (1999). It not only demonstrates the church's long history of concern for human suffering, it provides a thoroughgoing compendium of resources for the practice and celebration of healing and wholeness. Sound theology, pertinent definitions, and discussion of controversial issues, confirm and affirm the church's highest liturgical healing practices. A major portion of the book offers a wide variety of liturgical materials for life's maladies and seasons. Further, it enlarges the common understanding of healing by providing liturgies for social justice, human relationships and environmental needs as a natural extension of concern for wholeness in all of God's creation.
Professor Evans states her thesis early as "God's gift of healing is available during all seasons of a persons life and that the power of hope and healing may be affirmed and redirected through liturgical services, sacraments and rites. It is important, not only psychologically but also spiritually, to mark the passages of life and times of crisis" (p xiii).
This book completes a trilogy of works introduced by her REDEEMING MARKETPLACE MEDICINE (1999). Together these books are a bold, prophetic challenge for religion to take its appropriate place in helping lead the emerging crusade for health in the USA.

This book embodies the scholarly passion for healing and wholeness in the church presented so well in Professor Evans' classic The Healing Church (1999). It not only demonstrates the church's long history of concern for human suffering, it provides a thoroughgoing compendium of resources for the practice and celebration of healing and wholeness. Sound theology, pertinent definitions, and discussion of controversial issues, affirm confirm the church's highest liturgical healing practices. A major portion of the book offers a wide variety of liturgical materials for life's maladies and seasons. Further, it enlarges the common understanding of healing by providing liturgies for social justice, human relationships and environmental needs as a natural extension of concern for wholeness in all of God's creation.
Professor Evans states her thesis early as "God's gift of healing is available during all seasons of a person's life and that the power of hope and healing may be affirmed and redirected through liturgical services, sacraments and rites. It is important, not only psychologically but also spiritually, to mark the passages of life and times of crisis." (p xiii). Though she pointedly affirms appropriate adaptations and freeform ministrations for healing, her thesis situates her work in traditional worship and pastoral settings.
According to the author, this book completes a trilogy of works introduced by her Redeeming Marketplace Medicine (1999). Together these works are a bold, prophetic critique of current medical and theological premises and practices regarding health, sickness and healing. Her trilogy reproves the church for relinquishing its natural authority and responsibility in defining and ministering to illness, impairment, and brokenness to the medical and mental health professions. She traces the biblical and continuing church's primary roles in wholistic health, and insists that healing and health must be inclusive of body, mind and spirit. This stance offers a necessary collaboration between medical, mental health and religious professional. Yet she is more intent on demonstrating the spiritual roles and forms that must be recovered if the church is to have competent clergy and lay leaders for effective healing ministries. This third book of the trilogy demonstrates the profound range of liturgical-sacramental resources available. And by so doing exposes the inadequate training and practice in their use that is apparent to contemporary observers of the church.
The enormous virtues of this large (486 pages) book begin with its function as the library of the trilogy. Yet other qualities add to its value. Its format provides clear designations of the seasons of human life, as taught by Erik Erikson. And it offers introductory explanations of the resources appropriate to each of these seasons. Professor Evans moves beyond these stages easily to explore the factors and issues that disrupt and distort the living of the seasons of life. Her treatment of major illness themes moves beyond medical definitions to include brokenness, abuse, consequences, punishment and disabilities. The discussion of sickness as God's punishment versus its being a consequence of human behavior is particularly valuable (p. 149f). The discussion of death, dying and bereavement is remarkable in its concise designations of these experiences, with enlightening liturgies and rites from a wide variety of religious traditions.
Social injustice, racism, imprisonment, exploitation of the environment, diversity, and even "deliverance" (exorcism), extend healing to its broadest meanings in this book. They are the author's opportunity for adding perspectives and resources so necessary and yet complicated for traditionally trained clergy and laity. Including such dynamic issues demonstrates the necessity for the church to be involved in all the contemporary forms of sickness and brokenness. And in Appendix A she adds a valuable listing of religious organizations already providing the healing ministries she recommends.
Professor Evans' Healing Liturgies for the Seasons of Life lays before us the finest examples of the church's traditional and contemporary resources for healing. Along with the other two books, it challenges us to participate wholeheartedly in the emerging healing and health movement in the USA.

G. Lloyd Rediger
New Mexico Conference of Churches
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Healing Liturgies is a novel and extraordinary contribution to protestant worship in an area that has long been overlooked. It would be well if this book found its way into the pews of all of our churches as a way of centering the full spectrum of experiences and emotions that we experience as we traverse the seasons of our lives.

Dr. Evans has done an exceptional job in researching, editing, amending and adapting source material from traditional as well as original sources and melding these into a schema that brings a unity and vibrancy to the whole. Its major contribution, however, is in enabling the whole of our congregations to reach into the souls of its individual members, share the joy of joyful moments and share equally the terrible sorrow that attends the tragedies that are a part of all of our lives.

In assembling these many liturgies, Dr. Evans provides a wholeness that gives balance to lives highs and lows of life and gives meaning to both. This, it seems, is the missing ingredient in much of our contemporary worship.

She provides us sections on childhood, early to middle adulthood, late adulthood and the older adult in which poignant events are highlighted in each section, with commentary, reflection and liturgies that can be used in worship or as springboards for communal discussion.

Healing liturgies provides new perspectives on issues such as life altering illnesses, disabilities, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence and sexual abuse. It offers resources for use during hospitalization, general healing services and a multitude of specific conditions or diseases. It also addresses the "broken world" focusing on community needs, prejudice, criminal justice and the need for communal reconciliation.

This wonderful resource is highly recommended for pastors and for congregations.

What a gem, this short book contains the author's musings through a season on the family farm. The author struggles with aging parents and family conflicts while appreciating the land and it's history. The writing is just beautiful--leaves you wanting more. I highly recommend this one.

I am a city person, and the closest I have been to a small farm is buying apples in the autumn at a roadside stand. I have no idea how I chose to buy this book and Jane's two other ones, but I did buy it and fell in love with it. The poetry is deep; she tells the story of her aging father who in his eighties tries to keep his beloved farm going, her brother who has stayed to help but is angry and sometimes dysfunctional, her mother, and her own return after many years. These are wound around and blended with tales of seasons of growth -- of apples, berries, all sorts of corn and the customers who show up decade after decade to buy what they loved last year. It is truly a spiritual book, and gives this city girl a sense of the enduring earth and its gifts and the people who are closest to it.

Here and Nowhere Else captures with its perfect language the timeless undulations of rural living. It is not so much like reading a book as it is like walking the land with someone who respects both the comfort and the pain it can give. A truthful recording of enormous loss and a lyric epitaph for a family farm.

I ordered this book about a month ago as a present for my husband. After reading the stories (which are practically like reliving the experiences for any hockey parent), I enjoyed the book so much that I ordered several additional copies that we intend to give out to other 'hockey dads' that are friends of ours.

Even tho I'm not a parent of a kid on any type of travel team, every inch of this book was relatable. A fun, and very funny venture through the life of an everyday dad as he supports his son's sporting desires. Every page offered a laugh, and leaves you desperate to see what the next page holds. Very well written.

Being the father of a former youth hockey player, I REALLY enjoyed this book. I am an avid reader, but this is the first time I've felt compelled to write a review. So many of the antcdotes in this book stuck home...the endless road trip, the thought of my son as a future NHLer, the incredible cost...all true. And it's all presented in a very readable, and funny, way. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone with a child that plays, or wants to play, hockey.

Martin Brennan' charming picturebook, I Saw It In The Garden, is enhanced with equally charming illustrations by Michael Glenn Monroe. A creative and entertaining tale of a girl and her grandfather's garden, I Saw It In The Garden informatively carrying its young readers through "changing of the seasons" driven changes in the garden. I Saw It In The Garden offers a lyrical context for the emergence and growth of life with so very many plants and critters to be found in the garden. A helpful and encouraging guide with a fun and interesting story throughout, I Saw It In The Garden is very highly recommended reading, especially for those young readers hoping to care for a garden of their own someday with the packet of seeds that is included with this wonderful picturebook.

This is a WONDERFUL book with WONDERFUL illustrations! A great way to introduce young children to the concepts of GROWING and NUTURING via the garden! Sweet and Entertaining...Buy it, you'll be pleased :)

Spring has returned to Minnesota and the trees are budding and the flowers are beginning to peek through the soil. Everything looks new, fresh and oh so wonderful! I'm always in awe of the rebirth.

Martin Brennan, author of I Saw It in the Garden, shares the wonder of a springtime garden as it comes to life with plants and is visited by other interesting creatures. Grandpa shares the magic of a garden with his granddaughter. His wise words, "there are wondrous things to see if only you look!" is so true.

I Saw It in the Garden is a delightful story of two generations sharing the spring, summer and fall in the garden. It's also fun and educational and the illustrations are luscious; the colors are stunning and the pictures are some of the most beautiful and inviting that I've seen in a children's book in the past several years.

Armchair Interviews says: The story is fun and interesting but the vivid illustrations are so inviting, you'd like to frame them.