I recently registered with MomSelect, thanks to an excellent post I saw by Stephanie, which I can no longer locate. (oops! me? librarian? cite source?) I think I may have gotten to said post from 5 Minutes for Parenting, a new read which I am really enjoying. *hanging head in shame*
Anyhoo, I can point you to MomSelect, a company that connects moms and marketers. You don’t even have to be a blogger to register. Since I have begun exploring couponing, I realize how many opportunities there are out there for moms to try new products and offer feedback. MomSelect is one excellent way to explore even more of these opportunities.
After I registered, I was able to get some “virtual” SWAG from BlogHer to share with my friends and readers. I’ll be highlighting a few other things in future posts, but today’s post is a book review and giveaway of A Little Bit of Faith by Cindy Kenney, the first title of a new series called the “Precious Girls Club.”
Let me just begin by saying I am not a collector of Precious Moments. There was probably a tiny window when I was about 11 when I thought they were cute, but it passed. That being said, I really do like the illustrations in this book. They were done by the Precious Moments Creative Studio. To me, they look a lot more up to date than what I typically think of when I see Precious Moments figurines. They have the bigger eyes typical of Japanese anime illustrations and the look has been updated to something more along the lines of Polly Pocket or the “new” (2006) Holly Hobby.
Cindy Kenney has previously written for Veggie Tales. Her website describes A Little Bit of Faith like this:
The first book in a new series for girls 6 to 11 that celebrates the special gifts that make each girl precious in God’s sight. Girls will have an opportunity to learn ways that God made them special and how they can use their special abilities to make a positive difference in the world!
Girls can interact with the series and develop their own real “Precious Girl’s Club” by going to the website: www.PreciousGirlsClub.com where they can play games and discover how God made them precious.
The main character, Katie Bennett, moves to a new school and faces the daunting task of making new friends. One of my favorite things about the book is that Katie half-heartedly takes her mom’s suggestion for how to make friends and fails the first time out. (Hmm. Now wondering if I just like it b/c the mom was right! Mwahaha. Subtle marketing ploy?!) No one comes to Katie’s club, and she has to try again. I liked that things didn’t come easily for Katie, but she stuck it out. I’m sure many moms have coached a daughter through some difficult situation where they had to try more than once.
I will say that I willingly suspended disbelief on the whole “Katie-talks-to-a-guardian-angel-only-she-can-see” thing. I wasn’t sure if that part of the premise might be troubling to some. To me…meh…not a problem. I appreciated the opportunity to dialog with my daughter about such things instead of say, hmmm, why we do not dress like streetwalkers. I really found this to be a nice antidote to some of the unhealthy girl culture I was ruminating about over here.
And my daughter gave it a 5 stars, better than Junie B. better than Meghan Rose rating. I think I agree with her. BUT we’ll have to see how the series develops on that whole “better than Junie B.” thing, because Junie B. is a classic. We are not anti-Junie B. here. We do talk about how she makes some pretty silly choices and we enjoy laughing AT the Junie B.
I can’t say yet whether the Precious Girls Club will rise to Junie B.’s literary standards. But I think it might be trying to be something a little different. There is the online component mentioned above. We haven’t tried that yet because I think it’ll be another couple of weeks before you can log on, but we will definitely be checking it out.
Maybe I’ll have my daughter give you another review of Precious Girls Club online later. The book I’ll be giving away comes with a secret code to use at PreciousGirlsClub.com. If you’d like a chance to win a copy, just let me know in a comment below. I’ll draw a winner next Tuesday
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