Homeschool Crew Review: Kayla Jarmon

For our latest review, we received the download version of three new books by Kayla Jarmon: A Boy and His Dog, Don't Forget Me, and Dying is Part of This World.  Even though we received downloads for review purposes, each of the books are sold as paperbacks and audio versions will be released some time in the near future.

Kayla Jarmon started homeschooling her son when he was in junior high and started blogging to encourage other homeschoolers. She later started film making and through this had an awakened  passion for story telling. 

 A Boy and His Dog is an illustrated paperback book.  It talks about the very special relationship that boys have with their dogs.  It tells the story of a day in the life of a boy and his dog.  They wake up together, eat breakfast, take morning walks,  dig for treasure, play tug-of war, roll in pile of leaves, and much, much more.  Each page shows the love that the boy and the dog have for each other.  The text is short, only a sentence or two on each page.  It is a sweet story you can read aloud to young boys or children starting probably around 2nd grade can read on their own.

Don't Forget Me is the first book in the Discussion Book Series designed to help Christian parents have conversations with their children about God.  This book is centered on the conversation between an unborn baby and God.  The baby is talking to God, questioning the things that are happening to him, like sounds that he hears and things that he feels.  God answers and the tells him to "Remember, I'm here." At the end of the book when the baby is born the parents start talking to him about God and he is glad because he doesn't want to forget. In the back of the book the author lists Scripture references.  I think that the thought behind this book is a good one and the illustrations are sweet.  We want our children to know and understand that they were created by God, that he loves them and cares about them and wants them to know Him right from the moment of conception.  I felt like some of the "conversations" were a bit awkward.  You may be interested to know that it does not discuss conception and the scene where the mom gives birth is tastefully done with only an image of the doctor at the woman's feet.

Dying is Part of This World is the second book in the Discussion Book series.  It is written as a chapter book and is about a conversation that a mother has with their child over the fear of the mother dying after they had seen something on the news. The book has seven chapters:

Fear of Death
Remembering
Preparation Stages
Time Here and There
Help When Losing Someone
The Second Death
God's Economy

There are discussions questions listed at the end of each chapter and scripture references are given.  Talking about death can be difficult for some families and they may be interested in this book to give them a jumping off point or as a way to open the discussion.   This is not something we have had an issue with at our house as we just talk about it naturally when the subject comes up. I  felt like the conversation was awkward and didn't sound the way natural conversations with children go. I did not agree with some of the ideas that the author presented that the Bible does not specifically tell us. 

Other members of The Crew reviewed these three books by Kayla Jarmon. To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!