Elsie's Endless Wait

I just have to start by saying that I love this book, and all of the other A Life of Faith books. I can't believe that I haven't posted on them before. I like these books because they present a clear Christian message. Elsie's Endless Wait is the first in a series of eight books. It is followed by: Elsie's Impossible Choice, Elsie's New Life, Elsie's Stolen Heart, Elsie's True Love, Elsie's Troubled Times, Elsie's Tender Mercies. and Elsie's' Great Hope.

The Story Behind the A Life of Faith: Elsie Dinsmore Series

In 1868 a woman named Martha Finley wrote a novel called Elsie Dinsmore. It did very well. She continued to write novels about Elsie until 1905, writing a total of 28 books. Martha Finley died in 1909. In 1999, Mission City Press decided to redo the Elsie Dinsmore novels. They were rewritten in more modern English and each book was given a foreword about the time period, or a topic discussed in the book. You might be wondering how Mission City Press made 28 novels into only 8. Actually, there is also the A Life of Faith: Violet Travilla series, which finishes the original Elsie series. This is due to the fact that many of the later original Elsie books center around Elsie's daughter Violet and not Elsie herself.

Summary of Elsie's Endless Wait

When little Elsie Dinsmore was only four she was sent from her home near New Orleans to live with her grandfather and his family on the plantation of Roselands. The book takes place four years later. Her mother is dead and her father has been in Europe from the time Elsie was born on, so he has never seen his daughter. The year is sometime in the early 1840's. Although it seems as though Elsie has a perfectly good home, and she should be totally happy, she isn't. Her father has six younger half brothers and sisters, who are a great trial to Elsie, the fourth child Arthur especially. He is constantly doing things to annoy Elsie, and make her be on bad terms with his horrible mother or their nasty schoolteacher, Miss Day. There is also Enna, the youngest of the six children, and her mother's spoiled pet.

Then suddenly, Elsie's father makes a sudden return from Europe. Elsie does everything she can to please him. Sometimes though, Elsie thinks that her father is trying to make her do something that she believes to be going against God. She wants desperately to obey her father, Horace, but she wants to obey God more. It all comes down to one Sunday when Horace demands that Elsie play the piano at a party. Elsie believes that the only things that should be played on Sunday are Christian songs. and the song her father wants her to play isn't one. When Elsie refuses to do as her father says, he tells her that she will sit at the piano until she will play the song. Elsie ends up fainting, and it results in a large gash above her eye that is potentially life threatening. Elsie recovers, and her her father promises not to try to make her do things that she believes to be against her conscience. For now at least things seems to be turning out right.

Elsie's Endless wait was published in 1999 by Mission City Press.

Check out their website here.

To see a list of all of Martha Finley's original Elsie books, click here.

Eragon or Star Wars????

Okay, I don't know if many people reading this will have actually read the book Eragon or seen the movie. It is considered "high fantasy", so if you don't like that kind of thing you probably haven't read it and won't want to. However much I enjoyed this book, which I did, it seems kind of like Star Wars set in Lord of the Rings. When you first look at it you might think, oh great, this is another copycat of LOTR, but the plot is a lot more like Star Wars. Lets see:

A teenage boy living with his uncle on a farm located in the Empire, ruled by a evil king. He ends up getting a dragon, which puts him in peril. Evil agents come and destroy his farm and murder his uncle. He then flees his home town with the old story teller man, who teaches him magic. The old man ends up getting killed. Eragon the joins forces with a an older teenage boy, who is also running away. Together they rescue a beautiful woman in a prison filled with the king's soldiers. From there the escape to the secret hideout of a band of rebels who want to dethrone the king and destroy the Empire. The book ends with a big battle.

Now, lets see, excepting the dragon, you can probably see how the story compares to Star Wars. If you have read Eragon you could probably play "Match the Eragon Characters to the Star Wars Characters."

I know that my Mom wrote a very similar post about this same thing, but I just felt like writing a post of my own.

Bridge to Terabithia

This is an interesting book, because, for once, I actually liked the movie better. I'm just warning anyone before they even continue reading this post. I enjoyed the literature of this book, HOWEVER, I didn't enjoy having to make my mind skip over swear words. The 'd' word is used four or five times. There is also another swear word. That is not really what I had a problem with, although I prefer not to have to read that kind of stuff. My problem was with the fact that the main character uses 'lord' when not praying or speaking about God. And that is all the way through the book. So now you are probably thinking, WHY did she read this book?? Well, I read this book because I wanted to see how it compared to the movie. Also because it is written well, which is testified by the fact that is won a Newbery Medal in 1978. And nowadays, it is hard to find any books to read without a few bad words in them. I still can't figure out why the author would have put bads words in her book, though. It was written in 1977. And, I did forget to mention the fact that no one seems to hold any specific beliefs in this book. I mean that it kind of seems like they author is saying that if you just "believe in something" your life will turn out perfect. Yeah, whatever.

So here is my summary:

Jess Aarons is a fifth grade boy living in rural Virginia. He lives on a farm, and his dad is always trying to find a job, so their family is short on money. Jess is a runner. His biggest goal is probably to outrun every boy in the school and become the fastest runner in his grade. His five year old sister May Belle adores him; sometimes his likes that other times he doesn't. Then a family moves into the farmhouse just down the road from him. Jess meets their only child Leslie. Apart from his four annoying sisters, his life seems to be going pretty well...until Leslie Burke outruns him in the boy's race on the first day of school. He ends up forgiving her and the become good friends. Jess and Leslie find an old rope hanging above the dried up creek bed in the woods behind their houses. Together they swing across it to the other side, where the build a "castle stronghold" and create the magical kingdom of Terabithia.

Katherine Paterson is the author of this book. Bridge to Terabithia was fist published in 1977, and won a Newbery Medal in 1978.

Bridge to Terabithia was made into a Disney movie in 2007, starring Josh Hutcherson as Jess Aarons and AnnaSophia Robb as Leslie Burke.