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And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street by Dr. Seuss

May5

Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, was born in 1904 in Springfield, MA. His first book was To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, and it was rejected by 27 publishers before being published by Vanguard Press in 1937. Dr. Seuss wrote 46 children’s books, and although Mulberry Street wasn’t his best-selling book, it was enduring in its popularity.

In this children’s classic picture book, Marco’s father wants him to “keep your eyelids up and see what you can see,” but also admonishes young Marco to “Stop telling such outlandish tales” about what he does see on his way to school. So Marco is caught between a rock and a hard place. He can’t tell his dad that the only thing he saw was a horse and a wagon on Mulberry Street. So he embellishes just a little, and then a lot!

The horse and wagon turn into a mob, a circus, complete with a brass band, a blue elephant, some even stranger beasts, and people from all over the world. There was some controversy about this book a few years ago, and the Seuss estate pulled the book out of print. Which of course, made the price for used copies of story go sky-high. Most of the controversy had to do with this picture of a “Chinese boy” (originally called a “Chinaman”). You can decide for yourself if you think the picture is offensive or not.

At any rate, when it was first published, the New York Times gave it a good review, and the famous and somewhat dictatorial arbiter of children’s literature at the time, librarian Anne Carroll Moore of the New York Public Library, said it was “as original in conception, as spontaneous in the rendering as it is true to the imagination of a small boy.” She then sent a copy to her friend Beatrix Potter, who wrote, “What an amusing picture book … I think it the cleverest book I have met with for many years.” I’m in agreement with The New York Times (1937), Miss Moore, and Ms. Potter, which is why To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is a Picture Book Preschool selection.

To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is a journey of the imagination, encouraging kids to enjoy all the wonder that their little minds can conjure, while eventually returning to earth with the sober truth. Marco finally tells his father what he really did see on Mulberry Street, or does he? Perhaps imagination is just as real as Reality, just in a different way.

The Bicycle Man by Allen Say

May3

Say, Allen. The Bicycle Man. Parnassus Press, 1982.

Allen Say is a Japanese-American author, born in Yokohama, Japan. Say came to the U.S. just after WWII with his father. His father enrolled him in a military school in California, and Say hated the school and the United States. He was expelled from military school after a year, enabling him to explore California on his own. He began to write and illustrate children’s books while doing advertising photography for a living.

I suppose that even after having been expelled from military school, Mr. Say still had some respect for the American military and its soldiers and an appreciation for his adopted country and its new relationship with Japan and the Japanese. His book The Bicycle Man is set in Japan immediately after World War II. In the story, two American soldiers visit a Japanese schoolyard on “sportsday” and show the children tricks on a bicycle. Actually, while one of the two soldiers is a red-headed white guy, the one who does the bicycle tricks is a black soldier. It’s a story of international and even interracial healing and understanding after World War II, an event that tore the world apart in many ways and places.

The school in The Bicycle Man looks a lot like the school that Allen Say describes from his childhood.

“When I was a small boy I went to a school in the south island of Japan. The schoolhouse stood halfway up a tall green mountain. It was made of wood and the wood was gray with age. When a strong wind blew, the trees made the sound of waves and the building creaked like an old sailing ship. From the playground, we could see the town, the ships in the harbor, the shining sea.”

Allen Say wrote this autobiographical story from his memory of that school and of a special sports day in which the American occupiers and the children and educators of a small Japanese school came together to enjoy an innocent performance of bicycle tricks. And Say’s illustrations take the reader back to that time and place and show off the budding friendship that began to take place between the U.S. and Japan despite the terrible memories of war and destruction.

Say also won a Caldecott Award for his book Grandfather’s Journey about his own grandfather’s immigration to the United States.

The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Ransom

May2

Ransom, Candice. The Big Green Pocketbook. Illustrated by Felicia Bond. A Laura Geringer Book/HarperCollins, 1993.

First of all, does anyone really call a purse a “pocketbook”? And what’s more, in the cataloging information, one of the subject headings for this book is HANDBAGS–FICTION. Does anyone call a purse a “handbag” these days? Maybe, I might say “I left my bag in the restroom,” but handbag? Pocketbook? Maybe it’s regional. Or perhaps the author just wanted kids to learn a new word. Pocketbook. It is a rather important sounding word.

So, The Big Green Pocketbook is the story of a little girl whose big green pocketbook is empty. She can’t think of anything to put in it at home, but when the girl and her mother go to town on the bus, she collects many items to store in her big green pocketbook: a bus ticket, a lollipop, a keychain, a sample calendar, some crayons, and more. Now her pocketbook is full of treasures. The author describes each place that the mother and the little girl visit during the course of their morning errands with simple, but evocative text. However, as the girl and her mother arrive home after a long morning in the city, the story takes a critical turn. Nevertheless, all ends well with some help from a friendly bus driver.

Felicia Bond, who also did the illustrations for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and its many sequels, does a lovely job of showing the little girl and her mother and the big green pocketbook that the little girl fills with treasures from her morning in the city. Just looking through the cheerful and colorful pictures in this book can tell the story, and nonreaders will enjoy being reminded of the story, just by perusing the pages on their own, after having it read aloud once or twice.

A Pocket for Corduroy by Don Freeman and Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne would be good followup reads for this one. And you might want to have an old pocket or pocketbook or purse, or even a handbag, to give your preschooler after the reading, so that she–or he–can collect treasures in her very own Big [Color] Pocketbook.

The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Ransom is a Picture Book Preschool selection, and it can be checked out as a part of the PBP Farms and Cities Picture Book Treasure Box from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

Biblioguides: The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Ransom.

The Adventures of Taxi Dog by Debra and Sal Barracca

May1

Barracca, Debra and Sal. The Adventures of Taxi Dog. Illustrated by Mark Buehner. Dial Books for Young Readers, 1990.

My name is Maxi
   I ride in a taxi
      Around New York City all day.
I sit next to Jim
   (I belong to him)
      But it wasn't always this way.


Maxi is a homeless dog in the Big Apple until one day he meets Jim, a taxi driver. Jim takes Maxi home and feeds him and ties a red scarf around Maxi’s neck. Then Maxi gets to ride in Jim’s taxicab every day and “see all the sights . . . uptown and down.” Maxi and Jim pick up and transport all sorts of interesting fares: a businessman, an opera singer, a pregnant lady about to give birth, two clowns, and even a chimpanzee. And Maxi sometimes provides a bit of entertainment for the passengers as they ride through NYC to their destinations.

“The art for this book was prepared by using oil paints over acrylics. It was then camera-separated and reproduced in red, yellow, blue, and black.” I don’t know exactly what that process looks like, but the result is colorful, crowded montage of city life with black and yellow taxicab frames around many of the pages that contain only text. The illustrations fill the other pages with Maxi mostly at the center of each picture.

Children will love the rhyming text and the dog’s-eye view of New York City, which is why this Reading Rainbow book made the grade to be added to the Expanded Edition of Picture Book Preschool. The author blurb in the back of the book says that Debra and Sal Barracca were inspired to write The Adventures of Taxi Dog after riding in a taxi whose owner kept his dog with him in the front seat. I wonder if that taxi driver knows that he and his dog inspired a beautiful and vibrant picture book.

I just found out, by way of another private lending librarian, that there are at Least three more books by the Barraccas about Maxi the Taxi Dog:

  • Maxi the Hero
  • Maxi the Star
  • A Taxi Dog Christmas

If you want to donate one of these other Maxi books to the library, I won’t turn it down. I’m quite fond of dogs–in books.

You can check out The Adventures of Taxi Dog along with other books listed in Picture Book Preschool under the themes of Farms and Cities as a part of the PBP Farms and Cities Picture Book Treasure Box from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

Will’s Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Apr22

Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Will’s Race for Home: A Western. Illustrated by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov. Little, Brown and Company, 2025.

This middle grade novel is indeed a western, but a bit different from most books in the genre. Set in 1889 before and during the Oklahoma Land Rush, the story features twelve year old Will, and his family who are Black sharecroppers on a farm in Texas. Will’s father is a taciturn man, formerly enslaved, and tired of working on another man’s land. Will doesn’t understand his father, and doesn’t believe his father cares much for him. Then life changes when Father hears about free land available in Oklahoma for those who rush in to claim it. He is anxious to travel to the border to try to be one of the few who benefit from the opportunity.

Father needs someone to go with him, someone he can count on when the journey becomes difficult. So since Will can read and since there’s no one else, Will becomes his father’s trusted companion on the long way to Oklahoma and the land rush. The book also chronicles Will’s internal journey toward becoming what his father calls “tough”, becoming a man.

At first, I didn’t particularly like the prose style the book was written in: lots of short choppy sentences, with phrases interspersed between the sentences. “Sometimes Grandpa lets me try shooting a rabbit. Not often. I’m a bad shot.” “Father and Grandpa study the map. Marking, re-marking the trail. Praying for ten miles a day.” But as I read I began to appreciate the spare, straightforward prose as a reflection of the character of Will’s father in particular, and of the other western men they meet along the way. These are men who work hard and don’t always have much to say, but when they do speak, it’s important enough to require listening. The kind of man Will eventually will become, too.

So, it’s a coming of age story, a western, and a boy’s tale. In her afterword, Ms. Rhodes writes,

“Tales of African Americans on the western frontier are few. But having spent most of my life in the West and as a historical fiction writer, I felt compelled to explore the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. . . Will’s Race for Home is only one story, exploring a fictional African American family experiencing tragedy and triumph in their quest for freedom and a home in a ‘promised land.’ Will, the son of formerly enslaved people, is my hero. He has resilience, courage and loyalty.”

Many boys , and even some girls, would enjoy this story becoming a man at the turn of the century in the Wild West. There is some extended, and I think balanced, discussion, in short bursts, of guns and violence and when to use a gun and when to threaten violence in self-defense. And the ideas about the use of guns and violence are put to the test when Will must defend his family’s land claim from claim-jumping thieves.

I haven’t read too many middle grade fiction books from 2025 yet to compare, but this one is a favorite so far. Will is my hero, too. And with the tie-in to history and the Oklahoma Land Rush, I may very well put this novel on my wish list for Meriadoc Homeschool LIbrary’s collection.

A Walk in the Rain by Ursel Scheffler

Apr10

Scheffler, Ursel. A Walk in the Rain. Illustrated by Ulises Wendell. Translated by Andrea Mernan. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1986. A Picture Book Preschool book.

I don’t know how I discovered this under appreciated and mostly unknown German picture book, but I know I loved it at first sight, more than thirty years ago. Published in German in 1984, this one is simple, but it stands the test of time for me. It’s out of print, but at present multiple copies are available online, used for less than $10.00.

“Josh loved visiting his grandparents, especially on rainy days. Because Josh’s grandmother loved to walk in the rain.”

So begins our story. Josh appears to be four or five years old, and his grandmother is grey-haired but healthy enough to walk on logs and pretend to be a tightrope walker with Josh walking ahead. The narrative simply details the various things that Josh and his grandmother see and do as they walk in the (gentle) rain: a ladybug, birds sheltering from the rain, leaves collected near a drain in the street, the logs in the forest, mushrooms sprouting.

Josh’s grandmother answers his questions, feeding him a little bit of information about rain and its effects, in answer to his questions. “[T]he birds’ feathers are covered with oil, which helps keep them dry in the rain just like a raincoat.” Mushrooms “sprout everywhere when it rains.” But mostly Grandmother just lets Josh explore the rainy day and the various wonders that the two of them find on their walk.

Before the walk Josh’s grandparents give him a yellow raincoat and rain boots, and afterward the nature explorers dry off, and Grandfather reads a story to Josh as they look out the window at the rain. The illustrations are just as simple and delightful–and rainy–as the story. Artist Ulises Wendell used soft colors, mostly blues and greens and yellow, for the raincoats, and brown for the trees and the dog. Wendell, now deceased, was a prolific illustrator of more than fifty picture books and other children’s books in Europe, mostly published in Spain or Germany.

I like to walk in the rain myself, and I must like the theme of a walk with grandparents because two other books in Picture Book Preschool have this basic plot. In Rain by Sam Usher, a boy goes out to mail a letter with his grandfather after the rainstorm is over. In Gramma’s Walk by Anna Grossnickle Hines, Donnie and Gramma, who is in a wheelchair, take an imagined walk to the seashore and smell the salty breeze, walk barefoot on the warm sand, observe animals, and build a sand castle. Those are both lovely books, but A Walk in the Rain complements the other two rather than replacing them. Read Mr. Scheffler’s simple story specifically before a walk IN the rain, and then take that walk and see what you and your young child or grandchild discover on a rainy day nature walk.

You can check out a copy of A Walk in the Rain from Meriadoc Homeschool Library

Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown

Mar25

Brown, Daniel James. Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II. Viking, 2021.

Daniel James Brown, author of The Boys in the Boat, has another (2021) book out, Facing the Mountain. Despite my wholehearted support for the idea of “never forget”, I have to admit that I am somewhat jaded and tired of reading about the World War 2 Holocaust, and the Japanese internment camps in the U.S., and really, World War 2 in general. The stories are important and even relevant to our own time, but they are starting to sound like old news.

Nevertheless, this one deserves a place in your reading line-up or stack or To-Be-Read list, wherever you keep those titles that you are planning to read soon. The book covers the internment of Japanese American citizens and legal residents, but the emphasis is on the service of the young men, Nisei–second generation Americans of Japanese descent–“who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible in often suicidal missions.”

Definitely not old news for me. I learned a lot. The story of these men is a lesson in courage and fortitude and persistence that went way beyond my small store of those virtues. There are even a couple of stories that feature peace-making in the midst of war.

One example, many of the soldiers of the 442nd were Hawaiian-born Japanese Americans; others were from the mainland, mostly the west coast. The two groups may have looked similar with the same ancestry, but their cultural heritage and general attitudes were not the same. The Hawaiians, who were called “Buddhaheads” by the mainlanders, were much too easy-going and rule-breaking for the “Kotonks” (nickname given the mainland Japanese Americans). And the Kotonks were too serious and legalistic, having come mostly from the internment camps, as far as the Buddhaheads were concerned. This difference in outlook led to arguments, even fights, while the guys of the 442nd were in training, and it took some time and some hard knocks for the 442nd to become a cohesive fighting unit.

Then, also, the author Brown tells the story of Gordon Hirabayashi who fought his own battle in prisons across the Southwestern United States as a conscientious objector and resistor not only to the war but also to the restrictions that were being placed on Japanese Americans as a result of their ethnicity. And the Japanese American chaplains who served the 442nd are also featured with quotations from letters that these men sent home.

Daniel James interviewed several of the men of the 442nd, “by most reckonings, . . . the most decorated military unit of its size and length of service in American history.” He also talked to their families and descendants and read and shared their letters and notes and memories. The result is a well-written narrative history of the wartime service of several Nisei soldiers as examples of the entire combat team. And readers get a picture of the chronology of all of the battles and assaults and rescues performed by the 442nd, including the rescue of the “Lost Battalion”, a group of mostly Texan soldiers who in late 1944 in Germany were sent into a trap and only saved at the expense of many lives by the 442nd Nisei.

If you’re a World War II buff, you must read this book. If you’re not particularly interested in WWII, but you do like inspiring stories of courage, like Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat, you should also pick up a copy of Facing the Mountain. Finally, if you have a relationship with anyone of Japanese heritage or if you are a Japanese American yourself, this book is a must read. I’m not Japanese at all, but it made me proud to be an American, even though our record as a country in regard to how we have treated people of color is mixed to say the least. Still, the stories of people overcoming obstacles of racial prejudice and mistreatment, and even becoming heroes, belong to us all.

Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin

Mar18

Williams, Jay and Raymond Abrashkin. Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. Illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats. Whittlesey House, 1958.

The Danny Dunn books were a series of 15 science fiction adventure books, published in the late 1950’s and into the 60’s, about Danny, who’s a red-headed, adventurous, all-American boy who loves mathematics and science. Danny lives with his widowed mother, the live-in housekeeper for Professor Euclid Bullfinch, a researcher and inventor who works for Midston University. In Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, Danny is flanked by his two friends Irene and Joe as the trio experiment with getting Professor Bullfinch’s new mini-computer, Miniac aka Minny, to do their homework for them.

As dated as the science is in this book, I think this particular Danny Dunn adventure has a lot to say about present day technology and our relationship to it. Professor Bullfinch, in the story, has invented a computer that is much smaller and faster and more powerful than the actual computers (IBM) available in 1958. However, when Irene says to the professor that Miniac is “a kind of Superman”, the professor disagrees.

The Professor shook his head. “No, my dear,” he said. “It is only a kind of supertool. Everything in this machine is inside the human head, in the much smaller space of the human brain. Just think of it–all the hundreds of thousands of switches, core memory planes, miles of wires, tubes–all that’s in that big case and in this console–are all huge an awkward compared to the delicate tiny cells of the human brain which is capable of doing as much as, or more than, the best of these machines. It’s the human brain which can produce a mechanical brain like this one.”

“The computer can reason,” he went on. “It can do sums and give information and draw logical conclusions, but it can’t create anything. It could give you all the words that rhyme with moon, for instance, but it couldn’t put them together into a poem. . . . It’s a wonderful, complex tool, but it has no mind. It doesn’t know it exists.”

Professor Bullfinch goes away to a conference and leaves Danny in charge of Miniac. That’s when Danny and his two friends impulsively decide that it would be a great idea to program Miniac to do their homework for them. They don’t think of it as cheating, just using a tool like a pencil or a typewriter, but better, to help them do their homework more effectively. Complications ensue.

So many ideas are embedded in this simple story, so many questions to discuss. Are computers just a learning tool? is it fair for some students to have access to a computer while others do not? What about AI (artificial intelligence)? AI can write poems and produce art and author stories and more. Is AI just another tool? Does ChatGPT “know it exists”? Will AI applications become self-aware in the future?

Some people, called trans-humanists believe that AI and humans will someday soon be able to emerge, creating trans-humans with super intelligence and abilities. Although discussion of this particular fallacy (and I do believe it’s a false and potentially evil goal) would not be appropriate for most of the students who would be reading Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, elementary school students should be introduced to the issues and questions surrounding the use of computers and AI. I don’t a better way to introduce these topics than a quick read of Danny Dunn—and much discussion.

This book is the first Danny Dunn story I remember reading. I was aware of these books as a child, but I wasn’t too interested in science at the time, so they didn’t really appeal to me. The science in these books was said to have been up to date and based on a solid science foundation at the time. The authors consulted with IBM and toured their facility while writing Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine.

Content considerations: The book has some 1950’s language and behaviors that have become somewhat unacceptable in our “enlightened times.” Joe and Irene get into an argument when Joe blames Irene and women in general for some trouble that kids are having. Irene pushes Eddie “Snitcher” Phillips into a mud puddle in retaliation for his tattling on them and their homework machine. And it is implied that Irene has a mild crush on Danny, or vice-versa. The children are in eighth grade in this particular story.

The Adventure of Living by Paul Tournier

Mar17

Once upon a time when I was in high school, back in the dark ages, I had a friend and mentor who was a big fan of the work of Swiss physician and counselor Paul Tournier. Tournier, who lived and wrote during the 1960’s and 70’s, was a Christian author who advocated for what he called “medicine of the person”, treatment of the whole person, mind, body, and spirit or soul. His most famous and influential book was The Meaning of Persons, published in 1954.

I had not visited with Dr. Tournier since those high school days, but I remembered him as wise Christian counselor, even if his work was a bit over my head at the time I was introduced to it. So, when I saw The Adventure of Living on the used books sale shelf at my local library, I decided to give it a try. It was an especially appropriate read for me now since my word for the year is “venture” or “adventure.” I’ve been trying to live my days as adventures and to venture out beyond my self-imposed limits this year.

I found The Adventure of Living to be helpful and inspiring in my adventurous year. Modern author and psychologist Jordan Peterson has a lot to say about adventure and our need for adventure in our lives, and Tournier reminds me of Peterson at times, except that Tournier is more Christian and a little less esoteric than Jordan can be. In the first chapter of the book, called “An Instinct Peculiar to Man,” Tournier writes, “I should like to depict as I see it the great impulse toward adventure which is peculiar to man . . . ” and later, “Woe betide those, who no longer feel thrilled at anything, who have stopped looking for adventure.”

He goes on to write about what adventures actually are, how they begin, and how they die, creating the need for a new adventure. And using examples from his own counseling and pastoral care practice, Tournier illustrates the risks of taking the adventures that life places before us, the choices we make about how to react to both success and failure, when to follow a new adventure, and how to know which adventure to choose. He writes with wisdom and balance about prayer and meditation and how to experience and know God’s guidance in our small adventures and in the Big Adventure of Life itself.

I suppose The Adventure of Living could be classified as a “self help” or “Christian living” book, but I think it delves deeper than most such books tend to go. It was written before the advent of the 21st century tendency that we have to label and medicate every problem, spiritual or mental. And the advice and exposition of the subject come from a European Christian perspective, but the book speaks to anyone with a Western cultural background, even secular nonbelievers and those of a different religion. I don’t tend to enjoy the self-help or Christian living genres, but I did find this sixty year old book to be absorbing and useful. Mr. Tournier still has a lot to say to our somewhat jaded and over-psychologized age.

I’ll leave you with a couple of quotes that I copied into my commonplace journal just for a sample and a bit of adventurous inspiration:

“What matters is to listen to Him, to let ourselves be guided, to face up to the adventure to which He calls us, with all its risks. Life is an adventure, directed by God.”

“[T]he excitement of adventure rescues us from the sea of introspection that drowns many of those who hesitate. The more they examine themselves the less they act. The less they act, the less clearly do they see what to do. In vain do they interrogate even God on what they ought to do; rarely do they receive any reply. God guides us when we are on the way, not when we are standing still, just as one cannot steer a car unless it is moving.”

The Three Brothers of Ur by J.G. Fyson

Mar8

Fyson, J.G. The Three Brothers of Ur. Illustrated by Victor G. Ambrus. Coward-McCann, 1966.

Version 1.0.0

Published in 1964 in England and honored as runner-up for the British Carnegie Medal, The Three Brothers of Ur is set in ancient Ur, a city that is mentioned three times in the book of Genesis as the city of origin for the patriarch Abraham. Abraham’s two brothers, also named in Genesis, were Nahor and Haran. This is important because the three brothers of the title are Haran, the youngest, Naychor, the middle son, and Shamashazir, the eldest, heir to his father Teresh the Stern, a wealthy merchant of Ur. Despite the differences in the names, it is obvious to anyone who knows the Bible that these three brothers of Ur in the book are meant to be the three Biblical brothers who play an important part in Biblical history.

As far as I can tell, Ms. Fyson (an author about whom not much is known), seems to have done her research in regards to life in ancient Sumer/Mesopotamia. The city is made up of Sumerians and Akkadians who manage to get along with only occasional tensions between the two groups. Their religion centers on the worship of the Dingir of the Moon, Nannar, who is the patron god of the city of Ur, worshipped on the ziggurat (pyramid temple), but also the associated worship of family gods called “Teraphim” who speak to the family, give guidance, and ward off the evil dingirs (spirits) that also inhabit the city. The economy of the city is based upon craftsmanship and trade. Slavery is also practiced and portrayed in the book in the person of Uz, an enslaved donkey boy who wishes to become an artisan and sculptor of images.

The story focuses on Haran, the youngest son of Teresh, who is full of mischief and audacity. As Haran gets into one scrape after another, we get to see many aspects of what can be imagined about life in a Mesopotamian city in pre-2000 B.C. Ten year old Haran is a sometimes truant school boy who finds it difficult to learn all of the Sumerian characters for writing. His father, Teresh, is an autocratic ruler of the household whose word is law. The place of women in the society of those ancient times is limited, and yet the girls in the story–Haran’s sisters, Sarah and Dinah, in particular–are bright and interesting in their own right. The protagonist of the book is Haran, but Shamashazir, Haran’s fourteen year old brother, is the one who is beginning to grope his way toward the idea of a transcendent God, more powerful and relatable than the dingirs and the teraphim that his people and his family worship.

Children who read this story, or have it read aloud to them, will enjoy the exploits and misfortunes of Haran, who is a typical rascal of a boy, but with a good heart. Adults will be more aware of the religious journey that Shamashazir and his family embark upon in this book, and which is carried further, I am told, in the sequel called The Journey of the Eldest Son.

The Three Brothers of Ur was somewhat difficult to find in an affordable hard cover edition, and the sequel is even more rare and expensive. Nevertheless, I hope to find and read a copy of The Journey of the Eldest Son soon so that I can experience “the rest of the story.” You may be able to find a copy of either or both of these in a library near you, and Meriadoc Homeschool Library now has a beautiful copy of The Three Brothers of Ur available for check out.