Our Thoughts

A Christian title from Focus on the Family and Adventures in Odyssey as a Prayerfully Consider?! What kept it from the expected “Highly Recommended” verdict of similar titles? The huge issue lies in how the book wraps up. This title follows a common format of nicely wrapping up the primary mystery of the book while leaving the reader with a cliffhanger concerning the larger mystery and storyline of the series. The issue here is that this title leaves us with two items that, left on their own, should be very concerning to the Christian parent. First off, while the Christian faith comes up in various ways throughout, the book leaves children having read a story through the eyes of a main character who is skeptical, not so sure what they believe and attending worship in a negative way. This would be understandable content for the early and middle parts of a story that later wraps up nicely, but that is not the case here. Also, in other Christian titles we would normally see this lack of faith having all types of negative impacts on the character, as it does in real life, but Whit is already kind, brave, a great friend, stands up for others… despite not taking his faith seriously. To leave such a critically important aspect (the most important aspect) unresolved at the end of book one is not a picture we want to leave our kids with, especially from a Christian title. Second, after a full story devoid of any fantasy or magical elements the main character is left convinced that an ancient cloth passed down from previous generations has magical healing powers, proven to him by a miraculous healing of a dog. Now, while we believe it is extremely likely that in future titles young Whit will come to fully accept Jesus as savior as many around him do and that somehow the healing will be explained in another way, a way that gives God the glory, we believe it is a major failure on the part of Christian authors and publisher to assume all children will go on to read a multi-part series immediately after the first title. This is all far too important to leave something this critical to chance. --- The above is too bad because there is quite a bit of good in this title. The opening picture shows a Bible (we find out there are family Bibles passed down through generations from both sides of Whit’s family). When Whit says “Not that God stuff” to his stepmom she replies, “Is that any way to talk about the Creator of the universe?” followed by “And one day, I pray you’ll see just how important the ‘God stuff’ really is.” Whit and his stepmom have a beautiful relationship (Mom passed away). Dad prays at a meal. Whit is kind, brave, intelligent and stands up for others against bullying. Another solid character, the janitor, says that “The Good Lord made you courageous. He done it for a reason” and later “Ain’t no good trying to dance around His plan for you because you think it will make your life easier”. The family goes to church and we hear about the Greatest Commandment and the shed blood of Jesus (unfortunately Walt is typically not that into it and considers the services his “thinking time” where he is partially checked out). After church two friends come home and naturally want to apologize to each other for squabbling. Bible verses are used as clues needed to solve the crime. There is also a great friendship shown. The action is mysterious and exciting without being scary or dark. --- All that said, we again think that the primary concern item can easily overshadow the good. Some things should be considered non-starters. Our suggestion, for this series of the young life of a prominent figure in the later Adventures in Odyssey series, would be to either a) skip it for other Christian options or b) commit to read the full series yourself first, ensure the items mentioned above are resolved in a faith-building way and then, if so, ensure that your child reads the full series one after another with no breaks in-between. This is another example of why we all need to be very intentional and cautious in what our child reads.