I love these quiet, unassuming little blue books!

About a year ago (I’m so sorry!) my sweet friend Donna came to town (she lives in Colorado) and handed me a plastic bag. The bag contained five books from The Farm Mystery Series. (Donna, there are supposed to be six books, did I lose one?) I have to confess that when I first looked at the books, I wasn’t very impressed. They weren’t flashy, or cute, or alluring…nothing about them called to me and said, “Read me”. Plus, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to read the books aloud or let my children read them on their own. To compound matters, at the time I had a basket-full of books waiting to be read and I was very pregnant and not up to adding to my “read-aloud” list. So the books sat until one day when Donna asked me to pass them on to someone else and I was embarrassed to say that I hadn’t read them yet. I tried to pass them on as requested, but the day I took them with me to pass on the person to whom I was to hand them over wasn’t in church so I took them home and they sat in my book basket until a few months ago. At which time I was looking for a character building book to read to the children and picked up “Footprints in the Barn” book one of The Farm Mystery Series.

Very rarely do we read books that speak to our situation in life – as Christians, as a semi-large family, and as homeschoolers…but these books do. They are written by Mr. and Mrs. Stephen B. Castleberry and are about a Christian homeschool family of six that live in the country on a farm (the Castleberry’s also home school and have several children).  The books are very, very wholesome and are just a joy to read. In the books the two oldest boys Jason and Andrew have a “detective agency” and solve mysteries “for free”. But, the books also paint a beautiful picture of a simple and Christ centered family.

The books remind me a lot of The Boxcar Children but with the added bonus of the children living within a solid Christian family unit. Where the early Boxcar Children books were just “wholesome” these books go one step further in that they are unashamedly Christian in orientation – for example the family has nightly devotions, prays for one another (at one point in book one mom gets on her knees and prays as dad goes out to check out a dangerous situation) and the gospel is shared (they pray using Voice of the Martyrs materials).

My children are thoroughly enjoying these books and every night after devotions we hear “We are reading Footprints in the Barn right? Please, please, please!” and then after reading a chapter, (because the chapters always end on a suspenseful note) “One more chapter…pleeeease!!!!”

If there is a drawback to these books, it is only in that they paint such a beautiful picture of family life that they make me feel woefully inadequate.  The children in the story are so obedient and good I find myself longing for my own children to be the same way. But, that said - which says more about my selfish pride than anything else- I like the books because they actually give me a goal to reach for and show me a vision of family life that I’ve only imagined in my mind. (If only I really knew a family like this one in real life.)