In true Naomi fashion she tackled reading on her own time. It did not matter how many phonic lessons we did or how much we worked on memorization. She was going to do it on her at her pace and not before hand. She officially took off reading around 10 years old. She found a book called The war that saved my life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. We discovered it had a sequel called The war I finally won and she loved it equally as much.
Her love of these two books sent me scrambling to find other historical fiction authors she would love equally as much. She found Words on Fire and Lines of Courage by Jennifer A. Nielsen and loved them. So much so she begged and pleaded for me to read them too. I love historical fiction so I attempted it and decided if I didn’t like it I could just not read it anymore. It turns out I fell in love with it too.
Over the last few years much to this mama’s delight Jennifer has cranked out several other books as well. Rescue, Resistance, Titanic and her newest one coming out in the next few weeks Uprising! Set to release March 5th, 2024! You can bet I have my eyes on the release date.
The books aren’t afraid to tackle hard topics, but in a way I’m not afraid to let Timothy, my 9 year old read them. Because they float through our family and we all read them, they have inspired multiple good discussions about life, death, war, and how the world powers that be interact with each other, and what our response should be or would be.
You can find Jennifer A. Nielsen’s books on Hoopla, your local library, Amazon or most anywhere books are sold.