Gentle Reads

Reviews / Votes

"Prompted by a New York Times Book Review articles with the title A Good Book Should Make You Cry, whose premise is that language arts teachers love depressing books and YA award winners are full of bad habits and behavior, McDaniel disproves that notion with 500 recommended titles, Here readers will find that books with divorce, drug use, attempted suicides, and more but they all meet the criteria the author has set by being either inspiring, heartwarming, or in some way uplifting. Hand this to adults who want to feel comfortable choosing a read-aloud or gift. It's also useful for book club recommendations and homeschoolers. Arranged by genres, the entries include full bibliographic information, an annotation, and a description of why the book fits the gentle criteria." - School Library Journal "McDaniel has done an admirable job of offering readers an alternative and giving librarians a nice collection development tool." - Booklist "In her preface to this extremely useful source, school librarian McDaniel defines 'gentle reads' as stories that promote admirable qualities and traits such as leadership and courage...Mc Daniel's annotations are concise yet engaging, and give a good sense of what each book is about without giving away too much of the plot. This excellent reference is geared toward school librarians, and teachers, but public librarians, parents and even teens will find it to be a very helpful alternative to the widely available bibliographies of Christian fiction for youth." - VOYA "...Each featured book includes bibliographical information, a summary of the story, the criteria she used to include the book in the 'gentle' category, a notation of special awards, and whether or not the book is an Accelerated Reader, Reading Counts, or Junior Library Guild book. This is a fascinating book and resource to which I will refer often when choosing new titles for my shelves. Recommended." - Choice "Gentle Reads provides an excellent overview of a variety of books children will enjoy. . ." - Christian Library Journal "This will be a useful addition to the professional shelf." - ARBA