Review: Good Tale
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 26, 2012
Ten-year-old Benjamin Richardson knows how to talk a good game about trusting God and relying on His provision, but can he match actions to words?  Throughout the course of the tale, he faces many hardships and gets the opportunity to choose to accept the sovereignty of God or give up all hope.  In the end, he sees how God works all things to good, even apparent disasters.Benny and the Bank Robber is a good piece of historical fiction aimed at grade school kids.  It's told from the perspective of ten-year-old Benny.Although, in most places, the scene breaks are marked by images of a book, cougar, or horse, there were a few times that the scene break occurred in the middle of a paragraph.  I was able to catch on to the new setting pretty quickly, but this threw me a bit.Nevertheless, the story is engaging and appropriate for younger audience.  Benny faces challenges that are realistic for the setting and deals with them in a way that makes reasonable sense for his age.  He experiences a range of emotions from confidence and doubt to grief and joy.The language of the book is generally accessible for upper elementary kids of average reading ability with a few challenging words.  The chapters are relatively short.Check it out!