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This year marks 25 years since Tricia Reitler disappeared from the Indiana Wesleyan campus. If you're not from around here, you might not know that story, but Tricia was a freshman at IWU (yes, the same college where I went and also worked) when she disappeared during a walk to a grocery store just off campus. The case remains open, and I saw this interview this week, where her parents talk about their hope that the case will one day be solved. (If you are interested in knowing more about the case, you can Google her name to find a number of articles.)
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I think it was our trek through the beginning of his story and the book of Exodus that made me take notice of a new book that just released, called Imagine: The Ten Plagues. It's young adult fiction, and normally I don't read that since I don't have kids to screen books for, but this one caught my attention.
Written by Matt Koceich, this book is the second in the Imagine series. Matt is a school teacher and father of four, and his desire was to create a series that took modern day kids back in time to monumental Bible events. The first book took a little boy named Corey back to The Great Flood, and this book takes fourth-grader Kai Wells back to Egypt as the plagues are about to begin.
Kai is a typical modern day kid struggling with a bully at her school, when she suddenly finds herself in ancient Egypt, surrounded by Israelite slaves and angry Egyptian leaders. With her modern day understanding of the Bible, Kai knows what the plagues are as they begin, and her knowledge makes her an asset to the Israelites she meets, but a threat to the Egyptians. Kai runs for her life, trying to help a sweet little Israelite girl along the way and wondering if she will ever get back to her life in Florida.
I was skeptical but hopeful as I began this book. I really wanted it to be well-written, Biblically accurate, and exciting, and I was so pleasantly surprised to find it to be all three. I thought the writing was well-suited for a juvenile audience, though I wasn't bored at all as I read it from an adult perspective. The plagues were well represented and made me think about them in new ways through the detailed descriptions of what it might have been like to live through each one. In fact, I think my only disappointment in the whole book was that the descriptions of the plagues seemed to speed up as the book went along. The first few were described more fully than the last ones.
Kai lived through plenty of action in the pages of the book, and she was able to tie together the common bonds of core issues between modern day life in Florida and ancient life in Egypt. (Bullying takes on many forms, after all!)
I didn't find anything in the book that seemed off in accuracy, and I thought the author's fictional liberties were well-applied.
If we had a young reader in our house, I would have no issues suggesting this book as a good read, and I'd also be interested in reading the first book in the series (and any that follow). The concept is intriguing and the delivery is well-done. Well done, Matt Koceich!
** I received a copy of this book from Barbour at no cost to me. All opinions are my own! **
2 comments:
Our passover break begins Wednesday at dismissal! Cannot wait (granted barely taught this month!)
A two week break? What?? Our break isn't until April and then we're out of school by the end of May. I'll have to look into the book you reviewed. It sounds like a good/ interesting premise and I'm glad it's Biblically accurate.
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