Musings of a Snickerdoodle

Tillie Pierce:  Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg by Tanya Anderson gives a very interesting perspective of the battle of Gettysburg.  As the title indicates, Tillie was a teenager at the time the Confederates invaded her state (Pennsylvania) and thence ended up at her hometown of Gettysburg.  As the danger grows Tillie's parents allow her to go with a neighbor who desires to flee, with her two children to a safer spot at her own parents farm.  Ironically, their refuge ends up being a not-so-safe place with war taking place around them and nearby on the Round Tops. Tillie and her friends accept the situation in which they are placed and end up helping with the wounded and helping give water to active soldiers and in so doing she meets various soldiers participating in the battle (including General Meade) all the while worrying about her own family back in the main town.  The book is filled with interesting facts about the Civil War and many ...

The Illustrator's Notetaking Bible has a nicely bound bible, with a very handy lay-flat design, making it easy to write or color in it.  On the inside each page has only one column of text with large margins on either side.  Some of the margins have lines for writing in, many of them have pictures that one may color in (the Illustrator part).  I like to doodle sometimes while listening to sermons, sometimes it helps me think and stay focused, so I thought that this was an interesting concept.  But upon examination it was rather disappointing.  In a way, it is reminiscent of the illuminated manuscripts of the past, except that in the illuminated manuscripts I've noticed that the text didn't seem to have as dwarfed by the illustrations as this one appears to me to do on many of the pages (perhaps they did, I just don't remember).  If the text of the Bible itself weren't so small or if it were more…I don't know, 'fancy' I guess, it would seem more fitt...

I have never reviewed a game before, but this one caught my attention as some of my brothers and sisters love to pun and I wanted to see if it would make a good Christmas present for one or all of them.  I wasn't disappointed. The object of the game is to collect 10 pairs of pun prompt cards.  You win prompt cards by coming up with the best (or sometimes the lamest) puns.  The Prompter draws two prompt cards reading the prompts and the players have 90 seconds to write own a single pun that combines the prompt word topics and then they give the paper on which their punning creation is written to the prompter who chooses which he likes best.  The winner of the round becomes the new prompter and the game continues until someone has ten pairs of prompt cards.  There are a few other aspects of the game (like a pre-pun-prompt round and also prizes one can set up for the end of the game) that I have not described but the main fun was trying to come up with puns to...

I often sense a tendency in myself to take having an English translation of the Old and New Testaments for granted.  But, as Harry Freedman demonstrates in his book, The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning, I shouldn't take it for granted and should appreciate all the more the effort and sacrifice that went in to getting the written Word of God into a book that ordinary people could read.  In this book Freedman does an excellent job at writing, he grasps and keeps one's attention, and it flows nicely.  He takes you through history, beginning with the translation of the Old Testament and then including the New in the focus as well.   Translating God's Word into the common vernacular of any people was often very tumultuous and controversial, and we see this down the passage of time that the author examines, and through many different translators who often took many risks to make the translation.  Thou...

Saving the Bible From Ourselves by Glenn R. Pauuw is a book about people's misuse of the Bible, how it has  come to be used as a book that is a collection of isolated propositional statements that are written specifically for me and for my special encouragement.  Overall this book is argument against those views of the Bible (it critiques  other views as well) and I believe it is a rather good argument.  I mainly listed those two things because they are the things that captivated me most in this book. Then I will give my critique. First, Pauuw does an excellent job at attacking the rather modern approach to the Bible that takes the form of hunting for individual verses that seem relevant to us, "…find the fragments you need at the moment.  If you are looking for your daily inspiration, then find a devotional fragment.  If you are arguing with the local heretic, find a doctrinal fragment.  If you are facing an ethical question, find a moral fra...

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...

Jefferson's America: The President, The Purchase and the Explorers Who Transformed A Nation by Julie M. Fenster is well written and very interesting.  I have heard of Lewis and Clark and knew a tiny bit about their exploration but I have never heard of others who were equally important at the time such as: Dunbar, Hunter, Forest or Pike.  And yet perhaps I had heard of them in school but I didn't keep any memory of them or their expeditions in my head.  This book is a very intriguing account of how and why Jefferson initiated the exploration westward of what was then a comparatively small U.S., how he made the Louisiana Purchase (and the controversy around the purchase)and how he made it secure and justified his purchase by courting public interest in the expeditions he had sent out.  It mainly focuses on the men whom Jefferson sent out to do the exploring, and their adventures are quite intriguing. Most of the men Jefferson picked for the task of exploring and f...