Greetings Parents!

This page is just for you, to help you decide which books, if any, are appropriate for you children and teens. As we continue to build this site we'll expand this section, but for now we want you to have at least a little bit of information about each book.

The Jotham's Journey trilogy is a favorite among tens of thousands of families around the world. They choose one of the three stories each Advent season, reading one chapter per night. Each chapter ends with a devotional thought that focuses Christmas on Christ, and can impact your children in powerful ways. However, while these stories are not graphic, they do contain some violence and some scary situations: Jesus wasn't born into a perfect, sinless world. He was born into a sometimes cold and cruel world, and a hint of that shows through these stories. We recommend that if you have very young or sensitive children, you pre-read each chapter and skip over those parts you feel might be frightening to them until they're older.

That said, we need to add that we've had literally hundreds of letters from parents telling us how much their children loved the Jotham stories, and what an impact they had on them.  Those children range everywhere from three years old to eighteen! You, of course, need to be the judge for your own family.

Mystery of the Temple Court is (or will be, when it's available) very similar to the Jotham trilogy, except that it's for Easter. The story centers on Jotham's son, thirty years later, and everything we said about Jotham above applies here.

Submarine Spy is the first in an adventure series for pre-teens. It centers around two seventeen-year-old high school students who love to build things, invent things, and have adventures. Those adventures always get them into trouble with bad guys, though, and it's always up to them to save the day. This series is designed to teach basic Biblical concepts like selflessness, honoring your father and mother, faith in God, and so forth. The protagonist and his friend -- Mike and Jeff -- aren't perfect though, and sometimes mess up. When they do, there are always consequences, and the boys always learn a lesson from their mistakes. These ARE adventure books, but there shouldn't be anything in them too graphic or scary for ages eight to fourteen.

Under My Teacher's Desk was written for my wife's class, and is just for fun. Since she taught at a public school, the book is not overtly Christian in nature. However, it does teach the basic Christian principle of selflessness, and helps kids understand that they're okay, even if God didn't happen to make them the best baseball player or the smartest at math.  There are also good messages about judging others, racism, the importance of education, and more.

The two autobiographies we have - A Life In Photography with God and North Dakota South Pacific are from my grandfather and father, respectively.  They're good stories about the "good old days", and both talk about how God influenced and protected their lives.  Both books are fairly short, should be easy reading for fourth grade readers and above, and should make a good introduction for children to the idea of biographies. 

In North Dakota South Pacific my father does write about the horrors of battle - he mentions seeing a man's arm left on a gun turret and talks about Kamikaze attacks - and he also tells one story about a sailor who was drunk while on liberty, but mentions it in a negative context and reports the dire consequences to the sailor.  And, of course, in rural America in the 1930's it was nothing for boys to shed their clothes and go swimming any time they were near a swimming hole, but that's as graphic as he gets about that.

Other than that, there should be nothing in either book that would frighten, disturb, or emotionally harm a child ten or older.

As other books come on-line, we'll be adding to this section, so that you always know what's inside these books before you buy.

ALSO, as we develop this site, we'll be adding SPECIAL FEATURES for each of our kids and teens books (and maybe even the adult novels!). Each book will have it's own links to maps, drawings, scriptures, biographies, and so forth, and every kids book will have a reading quiz kids can take to see how much they got from the book. Encourage your kids to explore these pages.

Finally, we want you to know that we do not sell, rent, or otherwise abuse your email address, or other information with which you've entrusted us. We love to hear from kids, but it's not a marketing scheme: we're not trying to trick them into giving us their email. We do communicate through email when we have specials, new book announcements, etc., but we try to limit that to our adult customers, and never, ever, give out that information to others.

Thanks for visiting here! We hope you'll find something that suits yourself and your kids. Feel free to write us with any questions or concerns.

Arnold Ytreeide