Musings of a Snickerdoodle

Tales of the Kingdom by David & Karen Mains is an allegorical story about characters who live in a magical world with bad guys  and good guys .  I have vague memories of hearing this book as a child, and I  I recall thinking it was rather interesting, though I didn't remember a lot about it. As a story it is an interesting tale of girls and boys who find refuge in the forest with the exiled King.   Different lessons are learned by various unique characters, who all find a place in the Kingdom. There are creepy bad guys, like the Enchanter and the Burners and Naysayers.   The book tells stories    about individual people in the various chapters, switching back and forth between some, and introducing new characters in others.   They ultimately fit together very well as an overall story. There is the girl named Dirty, who loved being dirty and lived with the pigs, but comes to realize her horrible situation and wants to be clean. ...

This is quite an eclectic collection of works by J. B. Lightfoot.  It includes two (both to some degree incomplete)commentaries , one on 2 Corinthians and the other on 1 Peter,  and five lectures/sermons/essays by Lightfoot as appendices.  You get quite a bit of content in this volume. The Commentaries in this book are unfinished/incomplete, but you still get a good deal to work with. There is an editor's introduction at the beginning of the book that presents an interesting look at the production of this book and the discovery of the 'lost' writings of Lightfoot, as well as bit of info on Lightfoot's life, scholarship and some of his method of writing commentaries.  I particularly liked to see it pointed out that Lightfoot was a stickler for context, James D. G. Dunn is quoted in the book as saying, "time and again Lightfoot 'clearly demonstrates the importance of reading a historical text within its historical context, that the meaning of a text does n...

The Knight's Map by R. C. Sproul is an allegory for children and is very much like the Pilgrim's Progress.  Its focus is on the tale of a Knight without loyalties to any king who receives a mysterious letter, and also a map, from a King (whose existence is doubted by people), the King invites the Knight to follow the map to find a Treasure that will not fade away.  The Knight encounters many obstacles along the way, mainly these obstacles take the form  of the Knight being misled by other people like Mr. Skeptic and Mr. Liberal who try to draw the Knight's attention away from trying to read the map correctly (and even discouraging any attempt to read it at all).  The book has many nicely drawn (or rather, painted) pictures that I am sure would have captured my interest as a child. The story is well-written and would hold the interest of adults as well as children.  There is a question and answer section at the back that could be helpful to parents in pr...

Little Pilgrim's Progress is a rewritten, illustrated version of Pilgrim's Progress and Christiana for kids.   In this version, Christian is a "Little Pilgrim" who is close friends with a little girl named Christiana who has several little siblings. Christian goes out on his pilgrimage first, and meets with various characters similar to the original Pilgrim's Progress, though some of them have been changed to be boys instead of men.   Christiana goes on her pilgrimage later on in the book with her siblings, where they also encounter Christian's father who has become a Christian and is also journeying to the Celestial City.      There are two things that I had trouble with regarding this book and this is that first of all Christian's mother, who had gone to the Celestial City before him, is focused upon too much, she is portrayed as if she is watching, and possibly even helping him on his pilgrimage.   Speaking of Christian's mother, one characte...