Rating: Recommended with Parent Supervision

Reading Level: Early Elementary (as a read aloud), Mid-Elementary, Late Elementary

It took me a long while to get into this one. I gave up and tried again a few months later. If you can make it to the end, the reward includes a sweet example of Jesus’s transforming power and well-thought-out explanations about death and unanswered prayers.

Possible Concerns (Spoiler Alert!):

  • Death. A playmate of the children suffers from an accident and dies. The issue is addressed thoroughly in the story, but nevertheless parents should know death and heaven and loss are a large part of the story.
  • Adults asking children to keep Secrets from Parents. When caught stealing, the desperate woman begs the children not to tell. She says they’ll take her I’ll son away from her. The children agree to not telling the secret. Although their motivation was pure, it might be good to remind children that secrets from parents are not ok. Later in the story, the aunt tells the children if they had told her sooner she could have helped the desperate woman sooner, so the story does a bit of addressing the issue.
  • Stranger Danger. Two children are invited by a man to go look at birds in his garden. Nothing bad happens, but this is worth a conversation with your kids.
  • Tragic injury, paralysis. A playmate falls out of a tree when he makes poor decisions to climb higher. He never recovers and suffers great pain. The children wrestle with unanswered prayers for healing.
  • Fistfight. When two characters meet they get in a fistfight to settle a disagreement.
  • Mischief/Disobedience/Dishonor. Before she has a relationship with Jesus, the main character is selfish, stubborn, and mischievous. She throws tantrums, sneaks, does a lousy job with her chores, tells lies to get her way, and she and her brother pretend to be poor to sell flowers. To be fair, after she meets Jesus and accepts Him into her heart, her character changes tremendously and the contrast is striking. But unfortunately my kids didn’t make it that far.
  • Hard comments. The guardian Aunt said mean (albeit true) things about the main character before she knew the Lord. The little girl overhears and misinterprets. She grows to think her own mother would not like her. (Later the aunt clarifies she meant the mother would not like her behavior.)
  • Stealing. A desperate woman steals fruit from the orchard. Later she returns the money from selling the fruit and asks forgiveness.
  • Foraging mushrooms. The children gather heaps of mushrooms. Might be worth reminding kids to ask before doing that because they may be poisonous.

If your family has patience, I can’t recommend this enough. But if yours are like my kids, I might instead recommend Treasures of the Snow, which was much easier to get into.