Our Thoughts

In this wonderful and well written story, young readers are immersed into Africa, both by story and through really neat occasional illustrations. And this works well for a very good reason. Before the story even starts we are told, “Dear reader, you are holding a story written for my four children, when we were living in a spectacularly beautiful but desperately poor village in the heart of Africa. My Christmas present to them was this story”. It is also a gift to our young readers. Kids will also be drawn in right away, as the first line of the story reads, “The day the chameleon spoke to Mu did not begin with any hint of the extraordinary”. We did mark this as a Christian author and story, but we want to make sure we set expectations. This is a story that has gospel content woven into it more indirectly. Outside of a few more direct items, like in the dedication where we read “in the Kingdom, the last will be first”, we see things like where Mu “felt a deep ache of the heart, a longing for something he couldn’t begin to name” (beautiful). We also read about an enemy just off the pages who is “a destroyer, deception and destruction are his main goals, for he sets himself up against truth and beauty, even though he often cleverly disguises himself”, leading to a great comment, “It should not surprise you, from the little you have seen of life, to know that the forces of evil continually encroach upon all creation”. There are even neat head nods to scripture, like when Mu finds himself at a Red Cross mission, in the care of two loving sisters named Mary and Martha. And that is one thing we want to highlight. We have a bit of a love / hate relationship with Christian allegory and works like this where Christians integrate Chris-honoring content in, in more of a background way. On the good side, when you catch what is going on, allegory has a way of penetrating our outer defenses and challenge us in a way that other resources can’t. But that is only if readers young and old do catch it. We as Christian parents have a great opportunity to read these works alongside our kids to help them catch the rich symbolism that can be very effective at building up our faith. This is a great story to do that with. It describes itself as having “subtle gospel themes”, which our kids will likely need us to tease out for them. The kids get a great story that is virtue filled. We as parents will have to be intentional to help them see more. The payoff here will be a heavy focus on God’s sovereign hand and a clear pointing to the spiritual world being very real. If you needed any additional motivation to buy this one, the last page in this book tells us that “The author donates half of her royalties to a fund that enables real children to emerge with resilience from childhoods threatened by poverty, rebel warfare, human trafficking, malnutrition, loss and fear. For this and all the reasons we highlight above, we HIGHLY recommend this Christian resource. We end this review the way that the author ends her acknowledgements: “Soli Deo gloria” (Latin for "Glory to God alone"). Note: The publisher link below has a promo video for the book you can check out.