WaterBrook Press (September 16, 2008)
This was a quick read with alot of meat. The author writes about a young-girl as if he were somehow in her head going through the emotions and process with her. Getting into a teen’s head is hard enough as an adult and I would imagine even more so to do it from a female POV as a male. Ellee is determined to live life on her own terms and be her own person regardless of her mother’s perfectionism and performance issues that are projected onto the rest of the family. Her mother feels she didn’t and couldn’t live up to her mother, who Ellee is officially named after, yet she expects Eleanor’s namessake to do so even if doing so grates against her own personality and independent spirit. While there’s the usual tension of teen/parent relationships this is still a wonderfully heart-warming, holiday story that could easily be read at the dinner table or as a bedtime read aloud and not lose the younger children. The content is seasonally appropriate for preparing our own hearts to celebrate our Lord’s birth and the story will appeal to even young listeners who aren’t ready to read it themselves. While the nature of the story may be a bit reminiscent of Dickens as the subtitle “An American Christmas Carol” might lead one to believe, the plot, characters and content are really a creation all their own with a more contemporary tone that i suspect will appeal to the younger crowd. (ISBN#9781400074051, 96pp, $12.99)
Codicil:
This book is on tour this week so be sure and Google the title for more thoughts on it. Click the cover to read more and buy your own copy. On Fri I will be posting a giveaway for this book open to US and Canada readers. You can find an excerpt and additional info at the Publisher’s website as well.
