My latest book...

My latest book is "The Great Brain". The Great Brain is actually a series of seven books. They are about a Catholic family named the Fitzgeralds they live in a small town in Utah called Adenville. There are three brothers John  ( the author), Tom  (the main character) and Sweyn (he is at school in Pennsylvania during most of the books). It's based in the mid to late 1880's and their true stories. Tom is 12 years old and he is richer than all the kids in Adenville and some of the adults. "How does he get so rich?" you may ask... well Tom is also one of the smartest people in Adenville (except for his father... the only one in the town who went to college).Tom, by one means or another, gets things from people (by trading or any of his other tricks) and than sometimes sells them to other kids who don't have one. Sometimes Tom will make bets that other kids are almost positive he will lose, so they bet money, but he ends up winning just about always.

        In one of my favorite chapters one of the kids (Parley Benson) gets a quarter horse for his eleventh birthday (in the time of the chapter he was 14) and every year at the annual 4th of July parade he races all the other mustangs, mares, quarter horses, and saddle horses against his horse in a quarter mile race and he always wins. Than one year after he continues to boast about winning Tom tells John that he just can't stand Parley's boasting any more and he is going to put a stop to it. So he suggest that he is going to race his mustang, Dusty, against Parley's quarter horse, Blaze. Of course Tom's mustang wins, but Tom says that he will race on Parley's quarter horse and Parley will ride Dusty, but Tom says he will beat the mustang in a mile long race... That is just what he did! When they raced the next Saturday Tom did win! The way he did it was that he ran Blaze around the track one time (the track once around was a quarter of a mile) than after the first time around he slowed him down to a walk than just as the mustang was catching up he broke him back out into a run. Tom ended up winning by ten yards.

This and many other chapters are waiting in the books for someone else to read them. I definitely (needless to say) recomend these books. My older brother very much enjoyed them and I really like them too. They are one of the few  real laugh-out-loud-books that I've read. I would call the series VERY enjoyable!

My Latest Book...

I just finished reading Augustine Came to Kent, by Barbara Willard. It tells about a time when St. Augustine of Canterbury went to Kent. It is also about a young boy named Wolf and his father, who go along with St. Augustine and his fellow monks in 597.

Wolf's birthplace was England, but when raids started, Wolf and his family were taken to be sold as slaves. The raiders brought them to the Roman market place to be sold, and St. Gregory bought them and brought them to a house where they could live. He arranged for Wolf's father to be the helper of the farmers in that area. There, Wolf and his family lived for about 8 years until they were invited by St. Augustine to come to England to help bring Catholicism to it. His father refused the first request saying that he had to stay in Rome with his family. Soon after, though, Wolf's mother died.

The first time St. Augustine and his fellow monks set off, they were unable to make it all the way to England, so they sailed back. Wolf's father decided that St. Augustine and the monks came back because God was trying to tell them that they were supposed to go with them. Wolf's father left Wolf's sister in the care of dear friends and he and Wolf, who was 12 at the time, set off with the monks. Then, when they tried to make the journey again, they succeeded in getting all the way to England.

Because Wolf knew English, he was able to translate for the monks when they were in England trying to make conversions. In England he met a girl named Fritha. She and her father, like all the Englishmen, were pagans. Fritha had been promised to her cousin before they were old enough to protest. Soon after the family and the monks came, she and her father were their first conversions. Fritha later said that she not only had made a vow not to marry her cousin the day she was baptized, but had promised to marry Wolf.

But, her evil uncle was furious at hearing of their baptism and found a way to punish them...

There is alot of adventure and excitement in this book. If you want to find out what happened to Wolf and Fritha and if the Augustinians succeeded in converting England, you can find the book here.

~ by Theresa