Book Reviews

Reviewed by Tirzah Mae:

“There was no milk because he didn’t know that you need to squeeze the cow’s udders for the milk to come out. Because he was a city boy.”

And that’s the gist of it.

Truly a delightful little book, although it isn’t quite as explicit as Tirzah Mae’s explanation makes it sound. Parents of city boys and girls (like my own city-born Tirzah Mae) will have to explain why all the things the city boy tried resulted in “No milk!” and why “A little pat? A little squeeze? A little tug? Could it be?” finally produced milk.

A favorite of Tirzah Mae and Louis alike (and I don’t hate it, so there’s that.)

Kids need the gospel too.

Jack Klumpenhower’s thesis is simple, obvious, and only rarely acted upon.

I’ve been teaching children for almost 20 years now (I know, I was very young when I started). I’ve seen a lot of different Sunday School curricula, a lot of different midweek programs, a lot of websites for teaching the Bible to kids. Almost all of them agree that the gospel is important.

But when push comes to shove, lessons are moral tales or informational lectures. Every lesson ends with a “what you should do” or “who you should be” – without necessarily pointing to who Christ is or what He has done on our behalf.

Klumpenhower diagnoses the problem:

“We’ve been dispensing good advice instead of the good news. Eventually kids will tire of our advice, no matter how good it might be. Many will leave the church. Others will live decent, churchy lives but without any fire for Christ. We’ll wonder why they’ve rejected the good news, because we assumed they were well grounded in it. In fact, they never were. Although we told them stories of Jesus and his free grace, we watered it down with self-effort – and that’s what they heard.”

He explains the necessity of the gospel:

“Only the good news fights both smugness and insecurity, declaring both that we’re horribly sinful yet more loved by God than we could dare imagine.”

He describes the freedom that can be found for teachers and parents in sharing the gospel:

“Don’t be discouraged. Kids will need correction sometimes, but our mission is not to hound or plead or talk them into anything – it’s to speak God’s word of salvation, peace, faith, and the righteousness Christ gives.”

And then he gives practical examples, one after the other, of how to incorporate the gospel into your teaching, your classroom discipline, your home.

Klumpenhower gives tips for finding the gospel in every Bible story (even those obscure Old Testament ones). He encourages teachers to ask three questions of the text: What is God doing for his people in this story? How does God do the same for us – only better – in Jesus? How does believing this good news change how we live? I enjoyed how Klumpenhower walked through the process of studying a passage with an eye to the gospel. Even for those who are not teachers (although, if you’re a parent, you are a teacher), the exercise of finding the gospel throughout the pages of Scripture is still beneficial. This is not contorting the Scriptures to fit a “gospel-focus” – this is reading the Scriptures as they were intended to be read. Jesus excoriated the Jews of his day in John 5:39 saying, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” If we are not finding Christ in every page of Scripture, it is because we are not looking. All of Scripture testifies to Him.

In case you were quick to come up with a counter-text, a passage that can’t possibly be about Jesus, Klumpenhower does describe a few different ways that the gospel can be showcased in Scripture. First, there’s the “what does God do in this story and how does he do it better in Jesus?” that I mentioned above. But there’s also the “what does this passage reveal about God’s nature – and how is that aspect of his nature more fully seen in Jesus?” And there’s the one we see fairly often in some of the darkest stories: “what human problem does this passage reveal that God solves by sending Jesus?”

When discussing New Testament stories and texts, Klumpenhower encourages teachers to see Jesus as beautiful and to portray him as such to their students. Not primarily as someone to be emulated, but as one to be worshiped. He relates a time when he asked some students to give reasons why Jesus was better than good works. The only reason they could come up with was that Jesus died on the cross for their sins. Now, that’s a wonderful reason why Jesus is better – but it certainly isn’t the only one. He made a goal of showing in every lesson that year why Jesus is better than the many things that compete for our love.

Going beyond the content of our lessons, Klumpenhower encourages teachers (and parents) to consider what their classroom culture and their responses to difficulties say about the gospel – and to intentionally align their classroom’s atmosphere around the gospel. He gives an abundance of tips and examples for how to to do this and what it might look like.

One of my favorite aspects of this book was the inclusion of two little sections at the end of each chapter. The first section was “Questions You Might Be Asking”. Here, Klumpenhower addresses those questions I’ve heard or seen or asked a dozen times: “It sounds like you’re saying it doesn’t matter how we act as Christians. Don’t we still have to work hard to obey God?” “I understand some Old Testament passages are prophecies about Jesus. But aren’t you going too far in saying it’s all about Jesus?” “Do you really need that much context – like the whole book – when you’re going to teach one Bible passage? It sounds like a lot of reading.” The second section is “Show Them Jesus Right Away”. In this section, Klumpenhower offers immediate practical steps for teachers, parents, grandparents, youth leaders, song leaders, etc. to take to implement some of the concepts from the chapter. He always offers a practical step for parents and for teachers, the other positions are included as applicable.

In case you haven’t figured it out, I was highly impressed with this book – both with its thesis and with how Klumpenhower describes the process of actually showing students Jesus over the course of a class session. This would be an excellent book for Sunday school teachers and children’s ministry directors and kid’s club leaders to read together or individually. But it’s also a great book for parents (homeschooling or not) to read. The truth is, we ALL need the gospel – we need to set the gospel forever before our eyes. Klumpenhower’s excellent Show Them Jesus provides the rationale and the tools to do this – for ourselves and for our children.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Children’s ministry
Synopsis: Why children need the gospel and how to communicate the gospel to them in all our Bible teaching.
Recommendation: Are you a parent, a grandparent, an uncle or aunt? Do you teach children in Sunday school, midweek clubs, or youth groups? This book will challenge and encourage you to clearly communicate the gospel to the children you work with in everyday life. Highly recommended.

Anita Silvey has selected what she considers the 100 best books for children, from birth to teenage years. The first five books Silvey selected for her collection are board books. We’ve checked them out of the library and enjoyed reading them through together – although we enjoyed some significantly more than others :-)

Goodnight Moon written by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd
I know people love this book. But I just can’t bring myself to even like it. I read this to myself to say that I did, but elected to not read it to my children (lest they like it and I end up stuck reading it aloud ad nauseum.

Mr. Gumpy’s Outing written and illustrated by John Burningham
Not long after reading about this title in Silvey’s book, I chanced upon a paperback copy at a library book sale and snapped it up. I enjoyed the gentle story of the children and the various animals that joined Mr. Gumpy on his outing (after having been warned not to horse around) – but I thought the illustrations were rather lacking. Then I happened upon the board book version at the library and picked it up to read to Louis – and the illustrations were much better. Once I compared the two, I realized that the colors do in fact show up a little differently, but the main difference was that I had been reading our copy to Tirzah Mae at naptime under a dim lamp in her room – and was reading the board book to Louis in the quite bright library!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar written and illustrated by Eric Carle
I expected Tirzah Mae to enjoy this more than she did, but I’m wondering if maybe it’s a timing issue. I enjoy The Very Hungry Caterpillar and think we’ll probably pull out the copy we own later on when Tirzah Mae is showing interest in numbers, or when it’s monarch time and we’re inundated with caterpillars feasting on our milkweed.

Freight Train written and illustrated by Donald Crews
This was already a favorite of Tirzah Mae’s and mine – and we were thrilled to check it out of the library again. We’ve been reading it and doing activities with it and reading it again. It’s one of a selection of books Tirzah Mae has memorized and “reads” to herself frequently. This definitely deserves a place on any such list.

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Crockett Johnson
When I first read this book’s spare text, I wasn’t sure what to think or whether I liked it. Silvey describes this book as having a “believe in yourself” message – a message I happen to despise. But that isn’t really the message. The message is about the benefits of hard work and patience even when others doubt there will be any outcome. That’s a message I can get behind. Besides, I had to learn to like this book since Tirzah Mae likes it rather a lot. She loves the simplicity of the text and illustrations – and it can’t hurt that all the illustrations are orange, her favorite color.

My mother took me to the doctor nearly every year of high school. I listed off the same complaints: decreased energy, depressed mood, weight gain, dry skin, general malaise. We asked that the doctor check my thyroid. Thyroid disorders run in my family after all. The doctor would ask more questions, would order a lab draw. A few days later, I’d get the results and discover that there was nothing wrong with me.

Every November, when the letter came announcing my normal lab results, I’d wonder what was wrong with me – because there clearly WAS something wrong with me, whatever the lab results said.

And then, one year in college (if I remember the timeline correctly), the doctor gave me a depression questionnaire and announced that there was in fact something wrong with me.

Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD.

I started taking an antidepressant, and within a couple of weeks I felt better (by winter standards) than I’d felt for years. By summer standards? Me on an antidepressant still didn’t come close. But it was enough to convince me that this was indeed my problem.

Since the diagnosis of SAD ten or so years ago, I’ve experienced a couple of episodes of major depression and have read about depression in general. But I haven’t read any books on Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Until this year. This year, I read Norman E. Rosenthal’s Winter Blues – and it changed my life.

Dr. Rosenthal was the researcher who first described seasonal affective disorder, a cyclic form of depression which varies throughout the year based on light exposure. Winter Blues describes the discovery of SAD and its features, discusses the diagnostic criterion for SAD (including a number of charts to help patients understand their own seasonal patterns), and details the treatment of SAD using phototherapy, psychotherapy, and pharmacotherapy. Additionally, Rosenthal includes a variety of case studies of seasonality throughout history, in modern times, and in language and poetry.

It is the section of phototherapy, the area where Rosenthal did a great deal of research, that changed my life. After reading the section on phototherapy (sometime in October), I ordered a Lightphoria 10,000 Lux Energy Lamp from Amazon (link is to Amazon, not an affiliate link). I’ve been using the light (which is smaller than ones described in Rosenthal’s chapter on phototherapy) approximately 30 minutes daily since the light arrived on Halloween. For the first winter in almost fifteen years, I have had the energy to work steadily throughout the day without collapsing into overwhelmed-ness. Interestingly enough, while the lights had a significant impact on my energy level, it did not fix my mood. My mood continued to decrease through November until I initiated my usual winter antidepressant. The combination of the two modes of treatment has resulted in the best winter I’ve had for at least a decade, maybe even two. My mood and coping has been so markedly different that my family remarks on the change.

Using my therapy light while working on this blog post

This is not to say that I am an unequivocal fan of this book. Rosenthal’s language can be a bit flowery for my taste at times (at least for what is essentially a self-help book. Give me the facts, I say.) More distressing, while much of Rosenthal’s discussion of treatments is evidence-based, he recommends that SAD sufferers limit carbohydrates despite having only anecdotal (versus empirical) evidence of that strategy’s effectiveness.

Overall, though, I recommend Rosenthal’s Winter Blues for sufferers of SAD and those who suspect they might have some form of seasonality. Sections of this book may also be helpful for family members and friends of those with SAD.

Rating: 3 stars
Category: Medical/Psychology – Self Help
Synopsis: Rosenthal describes seasonal affective disorder and its treatment with an aim to help sufferers cope.
Recommendation: Recommended for those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder or possibly for sufferers’ close family and friends.