Book Comment: Fruit Happens!

Michael Christopher’s book, Fruit Happens!, (2010) is a free Christian young adult novel distributed by the 1687 Foundation. The short (only 112 pages) is the story of an old man named Dellie O’Shea who is reminiscing about his boyhood adventures.  He is a retired stage singer and dancer who describes himself as  “little person” since he is 37 inches tall.

Dellie has adventures with a girl he probably loves. Her name is Paisley Baker, but Dellie calls her “Cake.”. “I’d known for some time that Cake Baker went to church every Sunday, but I hadn’t held it against her.”

This is a doctrinally sound book written in a conversational style.  The book is an easy read for its intended age group of age 10 to 14 year old readers. The point of the book is to explain the Fruits of the Spirit and how they develop in a believer.  The process of Sanctification is explained. The novel does a very good job of that. I do have problems with this book, however.

1.     All the children have the same “voice.” One of the marks of good fiction is the establishment of clearly discernable characters who “read” differently from one another.  The children all speak like adults. In fact, they all speak like the same adult, clearly the author.

2.     The book reads like a disguised sermon.

3.     The Bible study meetings develop along the lines of an outline with each child adding just the insight that is needed at that moment in the exposition.

4.     I do not think that any teenager who is not already a Christian will read this book. It will hold no appeal for non-Christians.

The book is a very clear in its explanation of several doctrinal points:

1.     The fruits of the Spirit are not natural to us. They develop within Christian believers because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

2.     The fruits of the Spirit build gradually, with one leading to the next. God is conforming us to Christ. Sometimes we humans lurch forward in starts and sputters. The problem lies with us, not God.

3.     There are suggestions and study questions provided to aid the reader in expressing the fruits of the Spirit.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23

"Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,
1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation 
Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

A link with a children’s sermon about the fruits of the spirit:

http://www.sermons4kids.com/fruit_of_the_spirit.htm

Bible Trivia: Thumb Bibles

Thumb Bibles usually have to be read with a magnifying glass. The first Thumb Bible, printed for children and containing illustrations, was printed by John Weever in London in 1601. It was 3.3 by 2.7 cm (1.3 by 1.1 inches) and consisted of 128 pages.  It was abridged and did not contain the full biblical text.  Because of its size, it could only be read with a magnifying glass.

The term "Thumb Bible" was not actually used in reference to these tiny Bibles until 1849 and probably was a reference to General Tom Thumb, a circus little person who visited London in 1844 with the P.T. Barnum Circus.

There are surviving copies of over 300 different editions of the Thumb Bibles dating from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.