A bunch of curious (and sometimes feisty) cousins, a garden gate leading to time travel adventures, and a peacock to guide them - who could ask for a better juvenile fantasy chapter book?? Especially one where kids will learn about saints' stories - and actually feel like they are there!
If your child likes C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, he or she will enjoy Beyond the White Fence. It all starts with a grandmother's backyard and a girl named Katie...
Katie discovers that the valley behind her grandmother's garden is more mysterious than it seems. After tumbling into tenth-century England and encountering Saint Edith of Wilton along with her wild animal menagerie, she is helped home, wondering whether her adventure was truly real.
But after Katie, her cousins, and a neighborhood friend are drawn back in time once again, she realizes her grandmother's garden gate is a portal into faraway worlds, where patron saints are real people making real-life decisions.
Join Katie and her cousins as they mingle with Rachel and Jacob, meet Saint Mary Magdalene up close, trek across the sand with the matriarchs Naomi and Ruth, and have a nail biting adventure with the heroic Saint Katherine of Alexandria. In seeing the richness of the family of God, they glimpse how very much they are a part of it all.
Author Edith M. Humphrey, a grandmother herself (of twenty!) does a great job of storytelling in this new chapter book for 9 -13 year olds (and precocious 8 year olds) from Ancient Faith Publishing. A former teacher and lecturer of theology (at Pittsburg Theological Seminary), she does an excellent job of bringing Orthodox theological truths and historic saints' stories alive for kids - with excitement, humor, and even some movie references - in a non-preachy or didactic way. She tackles the topics of marriage and sexuality with the same amount of matter-of-factness as sibling rivalry.
Written in five parts, the last one makes for an especially suspenseful ending - Humphrey's handling of the bravery and martyrdom of Saint Katherine is wonderfully told. The reader will feel Katie's dread in anticipation of her patron saint's death, but it is reckoned with the power and glory of God in His Saints. It brought me to tears.
Beyond the White Fence is available now from Ancient Faith Publishing.
