During the course of the past 2 years we have been reading through the books series from Mission City Press called “A Life of Faith”. We began with Martha Finley’s series about Elsie Dinsmore, and we just finished the series about Millie Keith. Mission City Press as adapted and condensed these books for modern day readers, and our family has been delighted with these books.

How “A Life of Faith” can impact your child’s spiritual growth…

I feel blessed to have found fictional books that are written from a God centered and God honoring perspective. The characters in these books face difficult situations at times, but their faith always brings them through no matter how difficult. The main characters in these books have a deep desire to live their lives according to the scriptures with a pure heart that pleases the Father. Sometimes their convictions place them in a situation where they have to choose between honoring God and pleasing another person. I believe these books give our children an excellent example of how to apply God’s Word to their daily lives, and encourage them to develop a deeper relationship with God.

How “A Life of Faith” can fit your history studies…

If you are studying the time period from the early 1800’s forward these books would be an excellent addition to your history studies. At the beginning of most of the books the forward explains the historical background of some of the events that you will encounter in the course of reading the book. I found that even though my children wanted to just get to the story, it was very helpful to read the forward. It usually provided some information that they were inevitably going to ask questions about as we read the book. Though fictional, these stories provide a very in depth view of real life in the time period of the story from more than one perspective.

Boys or Girls…who are the “A Life of Faith” books written for?…

The main character in each of the “A Life of Faith” series is a girl. It seems that these books were written for girls primarily, but many boys will find these books interesting as well. There are many boy and adult male characters in these books, in addition to girls and adult female characters. The characters lives are inter-woven so well that you will often forget that the books are the story of the main character’s life. Depending on the literary tastes of the boys in your family you may or may not find that these are interesting to them. In my personal opinion these books provide some excellent male role models for young boys. Sometimes you see them start out as trouble makers or on the wrong path. Often you will get to see these characters turn to Christ, and see the awesome way that God changes their lives. Other times they do not accept Christ, and the outcome of a life not lived for God is revealed. Both examples are good teaching tools because they will allow you to discuss how God’s ways are always better than our own way.

We have just begun to read the series about Violet Travilla, and are excited to begin a new adventure. We have been reading each series in order as they were released by the publisher. As we have come to the Violet Travilla series we have thought that it would have been better to read them in a different order. There are parts of the Millie Keith series and the Elsie Dinsmore series that are intermingled, as their lives are connected and some of the characters cross paths in one book. I believe if we had to choose the order in which they should be read we would choose to read the Millie Keith series first, then the Elsie Dinsmore series, and then the Violet Travilla series. There is another series about a character named Laylie Colbert that we have not yet read, so we are not sure where this series would fit in the list. We believe that we know the connection of this character to the characters in the other book series, but we have yet to have any of the books in our hands to see where in the timeline this series would best fit in order of reading.

I hope you have been encouraged to think about reading these books to your children. If you would like more information about “A Life of Faith” click on the link on the side bar under “For the Kids”. The books can be purchased from their website. We have also seen them for sale in the Christian section of Books-a-Million., on the Vision Forum website, and other book stores and book sellers on the web may have them as well.. We have been reading these books through our local library. They already had the Elsie Dinsmore series on the shelf, and we asked them to order the Millie Keith series. They not only ordered the series we asked for, but also the Violet Travilla series as well. We hope that by the time we finish the Violet series they will order the Laylie series so that we can continue reading about these characters and their ‘life of faith’.

P.S.  Just in case you were wondering my children were 6, 9, and 10 when we began these books.  My youngest is almost 8 now, and seems to be enjoying them more now than when we began.