Review of And Then We Saw the Bag…, by Emma Adbåge

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

And Then We Saw the Bag…

by Emma Adbåge
translated by Melissa Bowers

Arctis Books, 2026. First published in Sweden in 2025. 28 pages.
Review written November 5, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

First, big thanks to Colby Sharp, a fifth grade teacher who posts about the books he reads to his class, for recommending this book. It seems to represent a universal human experience.

Here’s how the book begins:

Mom and Dad cleaned the house this weekend.
When we get home from Grandpa’s, we can tell.
The kitchen, the bathroom, the hall, the living room, and the bedroom.
And our room.
“Doesn’t it look nice?” Dad says.
“What did you throw away?” we say.

“We didn’t throw anything away!” Mom says. “We just vacuumed and dusted.”
“Just tidied up a little,” Dad says.

Alice looks at me.
They’re both lying. You can’t clean this much without throwing anything away.

Then we saw the bag.

The rest of the book is about the treasures the two kids retrieve from the bag. It’s a hoot!

Here’s my favorite:

“WOODY!”
“You threw WOODY away?!”
We are stunned. Woody is a piece of firewood that looks a lot like a real baby. Woody was our cousin all summer. Our baby cousin! Who we loved!
“ARE YOU CRAZY?” Alice says.
I rock Woody. He looks scared, of course. Mom and Dad are so ridiculous!
“There, there …”

And it goes on from there. They even find Mom’s favorite nail polish, which Dad threw away because there was hardly any left. (“Well obviously. That’s because it’s her favorite!”)

Reading this book immediately made me think of watching a truck carry away *my own tricycle.* Okay, it had a wheel fallen off, and I hadn’t been able to ride it for a while, but it felt like such a betrayal!

Fortunately, while my marriage lasted, we had a pact not to throw away each other’s stuff. I’ve seen hurt happen without such a pact. [Admittedly, after he moved out, the years-old printed schedules from work trips seemed like fair game.]

I do think it’s more challenging for parents to determine when something is legitimately outgrown – or when what appears to be junk has perhaps been forgotten about.

I do love that this topic is so universal, the story was originally published in Sweden.

But this book will make you laugh as you have the conversation. Too fun.

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Review of The Narrow Road Between Desires, by Patrick Rothfuss

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Narrow Road Between Desires

by Patrick Rothfuss
read by Nick Podehl
with Patrick Rothfuss

Recorded Books, 2023. 4 hours, 15 minutes.
Review written May 17, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

How did Patrick Rothfuss publish a novella without me noticing? (Oh. That was the year I was on the Morris committee and mainly reading debut Young Adult books. But still.) And how dare he write a novella? He really really needs to give all his time to writing the third book of his trilogy, The Kingkiller Chronicle!

This book was set in the universe of that trilogy, about a side character, Bast. There’s an author’s note at the front that you probably shouldn’t read this book if you haven’t read the other, but I think I’d disagree – I find I’ve completely forgotten what part Bast plays in the other books, and I enjoyed this one just fine. [And I definitely have to reread the other two books if I ever hear that the third book is finally to be published.]

Bast is an otherworldly character, known to the village as a lazy young man who works at the inn. But the children of the village know him as someone they can get a favor from or who will help them solve a problem – for a price.

This story sees Bast solve multiple problems and receive multiple forms of payment – and it all intricately comes together by the end. The payments for some favors enable him to solve a bigger problem – and it’s good fun spiced with magic. How much is magic and how much is cleverness? That’s not entirely clear.

In fact, the plot was intricate enough that I feel like I missed some things here and there – which I think is entirely my fault for listening while I’m doing other things. I’m tempted to purchase a copy – to go with his other books in my collection – and read it.

This novella was expanded from an earlier short story, which Patrick Rothfuss talks about in an Author’s Note. But my favorite part is when he tells a story about his kids. He was telling his younger son “The Three Little Pigs,” and afterward, his son asked for a story about the “Big, Good Wolf.” And Patrick Rothfuss turned that into a reflection that he firmly believes that stories don’t need Bad Guys. I hadn’t realized that he writes all his books with this premise, but I’m delighted to learn it. Yes, bad things happen and there’s a bad person in this novella – but they’re an off-page character.

Side note: I used to rant about this when I discovered that they tried to put bad guys into the Winnie-the-Pooh Saturday morning cartoons. They try to turn Heffalumps and Woozles into bad guys! In the books there are no bad guys! But all the Saturday morning cartoons had them – even Winnie-the-Pooh, for crying out loud! You don’t need them, and I love learning that Patrick Rothfuss has long been writing books with this premise.

So, this is a short adventure back into Patrick Rothfuss’s detailed fantasy world and his magical, evocative writing. I give you permission to start here, but you will want more. And his biggest weakness is that he’s slow to produce it. [Please stop writing novellas and write the third book! Please!]

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Review of You Are Now Old Enough to Hear This, by Aaron Starmer

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Fantasy, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

You Are Now Old Enough to Hear This

by Aaron Starmer
read by Nikola Hamilton

Listening Library, 2026. 5 hours, 57 minutes.
Review written October 9, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Here’s a spooky middle grade novel that’s intricately crafted with exactly the right amount of creepiness and wonder to keep you avidly reading or listening.

Honestly, there’s no way in the world I would have listened to this audiobook if it hadn’t gotten nominated for Capitol Choices. (And I am one of many members – I’ll just tell you my opinion.) It looked way too creepy for me. And then it started out so creepy I was glad I was listening at a time that I had to take breaks. And then the plot took bizarre turns (How in the world did Aaron Starmer think of these things?) and then things I thought were throwaways from earlier became important in the story – and it ended up amazing.

Roman Barnes is the youngest of several cousins, and all his older cousins have long loved to listen to Grandpa Henry’s tales of the Toe Beast. But it scared Roman, and he always went into the other room when Grandpa was telling the story.

Then one day, Roman sees Grandpa messing with a big padlock on the shed in the back and talking about the Toe Beast trying to get free. The next day, Grandpa Henry had a stroke and died.

Since Roman is twelve years old and has nothing to do at the end of summer vacation, his parents give him the job of packing up Grandpa Henry’s stuff. When he finds a key to the shed, does he dare open it?

What he finds is only the beginning of bizarre and creepy stuff and stories from both parents about both sets of grandparents. It all has an incredible beginning and impacts Roman in surprising ways.

And there’s not too much I can say about what happens without spoiling the surprises. But it’s scary and mind-bending along with completely brilliant and giving us a kid who shows courage and resourcefulness.

aaronstarmer.com

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Review of The Book of Love, by Richard Beck

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Book of Love

A Better Way to Read the Bible

by Richard Beck

Broadleaf Books, 2026. 270 pages.
Review written November 1, 2026, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

By coincidence, I started reading this book shortly after reading Zach Lambert’s Better Ways to Read the Bible and shortly before starting Trey Ferguson’s new book, Love Is True Religion. All three wonderful books bring a little something different to the conversation, but all three are about reading the Bible through a lens of love. I highly recommend each one of them.

The Book of Love is the most academic of the three books, which isn’t a surprise because the author is a professor of psychology. I appreciated that approach as someone who’s already something of a Bible nerd.

I had begun the book before attending Wild Goose Festival in September, and I was excited to hear Richard Beck speak because of what I read. He did say that he wrote the book not so much to give people new interpretations in light of reading the Bible as a book of love – so much as opening minds to the idea that you can legitimately find new interpretations by reading the Bible this way. As a psychologist, he used the language of attachment theory and said we want people to have a secure attachment to God so they will feel safe to deconstruct. He said that before you show people there are choices, they need to know they’re safe to make the choices.

Here’s how he puts it in the first chapter of the book:

That everyone has a hermeneutic should be obvious. No one agrees even about “plain” and “literal” readings of the Bible. But this admission is terrifying. Stepping into this hermeneutical self-awareness, watching yourself interpret the Bible, is one of the most anxiety-inducing moments of our spiritual lives. When you admit that you have a hermeneutic, or at least become aware that there are multiple plausible ways of reading the Bible, an abyss opens under your feet. Solid ground dissolves into quicksand. You can feel yourself starting to sink.

The source of the terror is obvious: If I admit that I’m interpreting the Bible, how can I know that I’m right? We want the Bible to be clear and transparent so that it can provide us a firm foundation of truth. This is why biblical literalism is so alluring. A plain and literal reading of the Bible would allow us to escape the quicksand of interpretation. Since the Bible is clear – plain words on the page – there is no need for any interpretation. We can stand firmly upon these plain words and their literal, obvious teachings will provide clarity and truth. This is our naive hope.

But the minute we step into hermeneutical self-awareness, admitting that even “plain” and “literal” meanings of biblical texts involve some interpretive work, the firm foundation we thought we were standing on starts to crack. If interpretations abound, even among biblical literalists, how can I determine which of these competing interpretations is true? If the literal reading of the Bible is now up for grabs, who is going to call the balls and strikes for us?

But then he gently leads the reader to a suggestion that yes, we can admit we are using a hermeneutic and not crouch behind the word biblical to hide it. I agree with the author that the hermeneutic he shares in this book is biblical, but it’s refreshing that he admits it’s a hermeneutic. (Oh wait! Did I not define that word? It’s one I’m familiar with from my student days at Biola University. The author does define it early on: “By hermeneutics I mean your particular interpretive ‘take’ on the Bible, how you make sense of it, especially how you resolve conflicts between different readings of the Bible…. Your hermeneutic involves how you interpret the Bible to reach your felt sense of conviction that this particular reading is correct and true.”)

And the hermeneutic he presents in this book? It involves daring to trust that God loves us and then reading the Bible as a book of love.

As the book goes on, I appreciate that he tackles some passages that on the surface don’t feel like they show a God of love. And he shows how we can indeed read them that way without twisting our view of God.

But where the author won me over completely was when he described his evangelical upbringing – and that his entire outlook was changed by reading George MacDonald’s writing. George MacDonald was a nineteenth century Scottish preacher – and reading his writings changed my entire outlook, too! I still can’t read this paragraph without verbalizing a vehement “Yes!” a few times:

What I and many others have found so singular about George MacDonald was his fierce consistency in reading the whole of Scripture through the prism of a parent’s heart. MacDonald possessed a boldness, tragically rare among Christians, to reject any reading of the Bible that suggested God would be anything less than our most loving vision of parental love. More loving, in fact, than the most loving parent we could imagine. If you, as a loving parent, can’t imagine doing something to your child, then it is heretical to imagine God, whose love is infinitely greater than your own, doing such to his own children. Your love, insisted George MacDonald, cannot exceed the love of God. Here, then, is a hermeneutical rule in reading the Bible as a book of love: God’s love can never be less than your own. God’s love is always better, infinitely better.

And yes, there are objections to this view, as if it doesn’t consider justice or truth. But he points out (with George MacDonald) that a loving parent works to correct their child’s bad behavior – as the Prodigal Son’s father did, even if that means letting them eat with the pigs. But bad behavior doesn’t stop the parent from loving them.

This is how you read the Bible as a book of love. To be sure, there is a lot of work ahead of us. Many biblical stories and passages stand between us and the God who is infinitely more loving than we can imagine. But equipped with the hermeneutics of a parent’s heart we have what we need to start the journey. Yes, there are those who insist that God is less. Less good, loving, and kind. We will face those contentious issues. But at the end of the day, there are only two ways of reading the Bible. You can read the Bible to make the love of God feel more fragile or less. You can read Scripture to make the love of God feel more provisional, conditional, and tenuous, or more solid, unconditional, and dependable. In every debate, no matter the issue, this is the hermeneutical issue at stake. This is the fork in the road we always arrive at, over and over again.

So that lays out where he’s taking you in this book. He walks us through the Hebrew Scriptures, the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation – and shows us how they can be read as a book of love.

And, oh, I recommend reading this! Especially if you grew up with a fear that a wrong opinion would make you end up in hell. Like George MacDonald’s writings, this is a breath of fresh air – and I do believe that fresh air is the wind of the Holy Spirit. Here’s another paragraph from the introductory section:

When it comes to reading the Bible, this is the deep question you have to ask and answer before anything else: Is God for you? That is the central question you must discern. Otherwise, every time we enter into a discussion about Scripture, God’s love hangs in the balance. Before we crack the Bible open, we must face our anxious attachments. Without confidence in God’s unwavering love, all that remains is fear, terror, and insecurity. Yes, we debate many things when it comes to the Bible, but this is the issue behind all the issues. Do we trust that God, should we make a mistake, still loves us? As readers of Scripture, are we securely or anxiously attached? To read the Bible as a book of love, we have to trust that nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even our interpretive mistakes.

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Review of Chain of Ideas, by Ibram X. Kendi

Audiobooks, Current Issues, History, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Chain of Ideas

The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age

by Ibram X. Kendi
read by the author

Books on Tape, 2026. 20 hours.
One World, 2026. 550 pages.
Review written October 19, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I checked out the audiobook version of this book, but I had some other audiobooks to listen to first, and I did not finish the book before the loan period of 21 days was up. I was impressed with the book, but the amount of information was a little overwhelming. I knew I’d want a copy of the book to write a review, so I decided to finish up by checking out the print version and reading that.

This book is a massive work of history. The author had so many notes, he put them on the internet instead of in the book – and it’s still 550 pages long.

This book is about the global spread of “great replacement theory.”

Great replacement theory can be defined as a political theory that powerful elites are enabling peoples of color to steal the lives, livelihoods, cultures, electoral power, and freedoms of White people, who now need authoritarian protection.

Great replacement theory is not only a racist and antisemitic idea. Like a virus, Camus’s great replacement theory has mutated all over the world into sexist, ethnocentric, homophobic, transphobic, and especially Islamophobic variants. Appealing to men, ethnic majorities, heterosexual and cisgender people, and Jews and Christians (usually through a mythical “Judeo-Christian” construct), great replacement theories warn that women, queer and trans people, ethnic minorities, and Muslims are coming to take their lives, livelihoods, cultures, electoral power, and freedom: Feminists purportedly dominating men in South Korea. Transgender young people, who comprise less than 0.002 percent of collegiate athletes, said to be taking over sports in the United States. Albanians supposedly boxing out Macedonians in North Macedonia. Sub-Saharan Black Africans apparently displacing Brown Arabs in Tunisia. Muslims professedly terrorizing Hindus in India. Roma people apparently taking out non-Roma people in Central Europe. Homosexuals allegedly “grooming” heterosexuals in Russia. Even “evil” gangs ostensibly replacing “the good people” in El Salvador. Wherever there are lines between privileged and disadvantaged groups, between groups in the majority and the minority, new mutations of great replacement theory seem to arise.

It disturbed me how global this sweep of ideas has become. I was reading Kristen Kobes Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne during the same time period I was listening to this book, and there were times when they talked about the exact same thing, to the point where it felt repetitive and I couldn’t remember which author had said which idea when. But Jesus and John Wayne talks about white Evangelicalism and the rise of Christian Nationalism in the United States. This book is about global politics.

The Chain of Ideas referred to in the title is about a series of linked political ideas that bring great replacement theory to authoritarian politics. And Ibram X. Kendi shows how the ideas in the chain have their roots in Naziism. Here’s how the book is organized:

There are ten links in the chain of ideas. Each of the ten sections in Chain of Ideas tells the story of a single idea, set in a different nation, featuring a different great replacement politician as its main character, while chronologically narrating periods of electoral growth for great replacement parties. The sections connect these political ideas to their historical antecedents, making Chain of Ideas transnational and transhistorical. The seeds of great replacement theory emerged at the end of the nineteenth century “when the establishment of modern nationalism in the West concurred with the high days of European colonialism and imperialism,” sociologists Sarah Bracke and Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar explain. Enslavers, colonizers, eugenicists, fascists, segregationists, dictators, apartheid officials, and – most of all – Nazis all expressed earlier versions of these same ten ideas, or of great replacement theory.

The book is 550 pages and 20 hours long, so I can’t give as detailed a picture as I’d like. But let me give the section headings so you know what the ten ideas are in the chain.

Link 1: “Privileged groups lose out as disadvantaged groups gain.”

This is the basic great replacement idea. This section features Marine Le Pen in France.

Link 2: “Inequity data should be ignored.”

The whole great replacement idea is based on perceptions, not on facts. This section features Viktor Orban of Hungary.

Link 3: “Bigotry is prejudice and interpersonal discrimination.”

Great replacement theorists don’t want you talking about racist or bigoted systems. This section features José Antonio Kast of Chile.

Link 4: “Bigotry against historically disadvantaged groups is over.”

This idea teaches that we have gotten past bigotry and racism. This section features Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom.

Link 5: “Bigotry against privileged groups is on the rise.”

Make the privileged feel discriminated against, especially if any effort is made to adjust for historical inequities. This section features Geert Wilders of the Netherlands.

Link 6: “Majority and privileged groups are indigenous to the nation.”

This is the idea that “real Americans,” or the indigenous people in other countries are White folks, or precisely the groups with the most power. This section features Alice Weidel of Germany.

Link 7: “Fight for freedom as patriots, like the nation’s founders.”

Because privileged groups are the real patriots, fighting for their privileges is patriotic. This section features Pierre Poilievre of Canada.

Link 8: “Stand in the legacy of antislavery, anticolonialism, civil rights activism, and antifascism.

See how the ideas are linked? Because fighting for privileged groups is the real patriotism, they are in the noble legacy of all who have fought for justice. The politician featured in this section is Giorgia Meloni of Italy.

Link 9: “Insurrections against democracy protect the nation.”

This is how you get the firm belief of the J6ers that they were protecting the country. This section featured Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

Link 10: “Fight for privileges provided by dictators instead of power provided by democracy.”

And so we see how great replacement theory has led us through this chain of ideas to authoritarianism. The politician featured in this section is Vladimir Putin of Russia.

You’ll notice that Donald Trump doesn’t get a section to himself. Rest assured that he is mentioned in every section. But this isn’t a book merely about the United States. I learned much about what’s going on in the rest of the world that I didn’t particularly want to know.

I hope this all has intrigued you enough to pick up the book or place a hold for the audiobook. There’s much information provided explaining and expanding on each link in the chain, especially giving examples relating to the featured politicians. I did like that the chapters are short. In the print book, that helps me grasp the ideas. (In the audiobook, it just barrels through chapters quickly; in print I can do a chapter a day and have an amount I can digest.)

Opening your eyes to underlying ideas is a good way to combat them. I hope this book will reach a wide audience.

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Review of Melodies of the Weary Blues, by Langston Hughes, compiled by Shamar Knight-Justice

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Melodies of the Weary Blues

Classic Poems Illustrated for Young People

by Langston Hughes
Art by 23 remarkable artists
Compiled by Shamar Knight-Justice

Harper, 2026. 48 pages.
Review written April 17, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This book is a picture book compilation of 23 poems by Langston Hughes and illustrated by 23 different distinguished artists.

What a wonderful way to introduce children to the work of this great poet! The thought and care that went into each artist’s illustration combines with the powerful words to pull you back to this book over and over.

There’s an Introduction from the compiler, Shamar Knight-Justice, then after the poems we’ve got a biography of Langston Hughes, a timeline of his life, and paragraphs about each of the 23 artists.

I believe this book succeeds in the goals set out in the Introduction:

Good poetry makes you feel something, whether you want to or not….

When creating this version of The Weary Blues, we wanted to ensure that the artistry matched the depth of its words. Each spread embodies nuance and layers. Poems of The Weary Blues have found their way into various collections and have been illustrated by talented creators before. This anthology of artists represents a different take and a unique challenge: seamlessly weaving together the artistic identities of twenty-three different illustrators in a way that is cohesive.

We hope that this body of work evokes emotion. That you see yourself reflected in the words that were written over one hundred years ago. That you are transported back to the time of the Harlem Renaissance, that you hear the jazz and the blues at their start, and encounter Hughes’s work from a new vantage point.
We are excited to reinvent such a canonical work. This book is meant to honor an icon.

shamarknightjustice.com
harpercollinschildrens.com

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Review of Another Tongue, by Yevgenia Nayberg

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Another Tongue

by Yevgenia Nayberg

Neal Porter Books (Holiday House), 2026. 36 pages.
Review written September 23, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This picture book explains simply to children what it’s like to move to a country where they speak a different language from the one you were born hearing.

Here’s how it begins:

This is your tongue. [Picture of a kid sticking out their tongue]

This is your mother’s tongue. [Picture of a woman holding a toothbrush and sticking out her tongue.]

The first language you learn is also called a mother tongue!

It is the first language you hear as a baby.

The book goes on to talk about how you learn all the words in your mother tongue.

Different countries have different mother tongues.

When you come to a new country, you may not understand the language at first.

Your ears may get tired of listening to the new language.

The new language may taste funny on your tongue.

There are amusing pictures with all of that, and collaged letters flying around the pages.

It goes on to talk about learning the new language, some words being easier than others, and often making mistakes.

But little by little,
the new words will
begin to make sense.

They will connect.
They will feel
like your own.

And from then on, you will be bilingual. Which means someone with two tongues!

What’s your mother tongue?

It’s all so simple, and by addressing the entire book to the reader, you feel the frustrations and triumphs of trying to get another language right. The pictures are imaginative, and the examples are silly (“Vampire State Building”), and it’s a delightful story about an abstract concept becoming understandable to kids.

Added later: I love the book all the more after looking up the author and discovering she’s Ukrainian.

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Review of The Last Dragon on Mars, by Scott Reintgen

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction, Starred Review 0

The Last Dragon on Mars

by Scott Reintgen
read by Landon Woodson

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 9 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written October 13, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Last Dragon on Mars is the first in a trilogy about spaceships powered by dragons, featuring a crew made up of thirteen-year-old humans.

As the book opens, we meet Lunar Jones, an orphan who lives on a relocation center in Mars and takes care of the other kids there by working as a scrapper – when a storm goes through, he goes out into the wastes to dig up scrap metal to sell.

That first mission doesn’t go well (though we get to experience all the drama of the attempt), and Lunar takes refuge in a military zone, because the likelihood of being killed there is still less than the certainty of being killed by the other scrappers who are stealing the prize he found.

But in the military zone, Lunar follows some tunnels and discovers a massive underground habitat – and a dragon nobody on Mars knew about.

When the military folks in charge of the hidden base try to kill him (because of course they do), the dragon stops them – he’s chosen Lunar as his dragoon.

But not everyone wants there to be another dragon. The dragon is young, and the kids who were selected and brought up to train with him are about Lunar’s age, all young teens. The man in charge who arranged all this (except the part about Lunar joining them) has reason to believe dragons on other planets may not be happy to hear about another dragon on Mars.

It’s not giving anything away to say that Lunar and his new friends end up flying on a dragonship with their lives at stake.

I won’t even try to explain the whole world-building with a dragon for each planet and each moon and star. But it’s all built smoothly, with no lull in the action – we learn details because lives are at stake. And it adds up to battles in space with spaceships powered by dragons. What could be better?

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Review of Why Did Jesus Have to Die? by Adam Hamilton

Christmas, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

The Meaning of the Crucifixion

by Adam Hamilton

Abingdon Press, 2025. 121 pages.
Review written April 28, 2026, from my own copy, ordered via Amazon.com.
Starred Review

I’ve read several books about the meaning of the crucifixion, and especially offering alternatives to the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. Some stand-outs include Did God Kill Jesus?, by Tony Jones; A More Christlike God, by Bradley Jersak; Creation and the Cross, by Elizabeth Johnson; and Lamb of the Free, by Andrew Rillera. My personal favorite by far is still Lamb of the Free, but I have to admit that it’s written with super academic language, pretty much directed at scholars and other Bible nerds. Its point is understanding the entire sacrificial system in Scripture, and a side effect of that understanding is showing that the penal substitutionary theory simply doesn’t fit.

However, much as I love Lamb of the Free, it’s pretty clear that this new book by Adam Hamilton is much less intimidating for your average Christian to pick up to better understand Christ’s death. It would work much better for going through with a small group, and it’s even in six chapters – pretty much asking to be a study during the season of Lent.

He is also not at all combative about atonement theories. He’s not looking to get you to reject one and choose another that you like better. He does cover penal substitution theory and the questions it brings up. Rather than outright rejecting it, he asks what can we learn from it?

This is his overall approach to all the theories, and I find it refreshing. Looking at the prologue to the Gospel of John, where Jesus is described as the Word, the Logos, he explains how that lens can change our view:

If we begin by seeing the Crucifixion and the atonement through the lens of John’s prologue, then we can recognize that Jesus’ death is not primarily a transaction, mechanism, or formula – it is not a divine quid pro quo where one thing automatically results in another (Jesus’ death procures our forgiveness, for instance). Instead, the Crucifixion is first and foremost a Word or message from God. This Word has the power to save, to deliver, to rescue, to redeem, to forgive, to heal, to inspire, and to love. It is intended to move us, to change us, to open our eyes and our hearts, to transform us, and to heal us and the world. We might call this the Logos theory of the atonement or simply refer to the Crucifixion as God’s Word.

When we understand this, our question changes from “How does the Crucifixion work?” to “What is God seeking to say to us through the Crucifixion?” Paul notes, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed. But it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved” (I Corinthians 1:18, emphasis added). It is the message of the cross – God’s Word to us through the cross – that has the power to save. Each of the various metaphors used in the New Testament, and each of the different popular atonement theories in the church, are ways the disciples, and believers ever since, have heard God speaking through the cross. Each captures a different dimension of this Word. The focus is not understanding a mechanism, but rather hearing and accepting God’s Word of redemption, forgiveness, and love.

In the chapter on the penal substitution theory, he elaborates on this:

In moving away from seeing the Crucifixion as a formula or equation, but instead as God’s message to us, Christ’s death is not something God needed in order to forgive us, but something we needed in order to understand and accept that we are forgiven. In seeing the Crucifixion as God’s Word, we see God demonstrating the pain he himself experiences as a result of human sin but also the lengths to which he is willing to go to save us from it.

At this point, let me say that I don’t like the title of this book. I’ve heard this question myself – but always from people who have been taught that the penal substitution theory of the atonement is the very definition of the gospel – and that Jesus had to die in order for God to forgive us. Implied in the question is, “If Jesus didn’t have to die for God to forgive us, then why did he have to die?”

God forgave humans long before Jesus’ death! Read Psalm 103 if you don’t believe me. The Hebrew Bible is full of statements declaring God to be compassionate and gracious and forgiving sins. So I strongly believe that Jesus did not have to die in order for God to forgive us.

Adam Hamilton does take this up in the Postscript to the book, and says he considered calling it instead, Did Jesus Have to Die?. He shows many places where it is clear that Jesus could have turned away from the cross, and that he laid down his own life rather than having it taken from him.

Jesus didn’t have to die. While his death was a result of opposition and injustice he faced, it was more than that. He believed his death would accomplish God’s purposes, purposes we have described in the previous chapters and perhaps others. For these reasons Jesus chose to submit to a horrible death. He believed that through it, he would change the world. This is captured in the words he spoke shortly before his death. “‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me.’ (He said this to show how he was going to die)” (John 12:32-33).

So Adam Hamilton does discuss several theories of the atonement – including New Covenant, Redemption, Moral Influence, and Christus Victor. But it’s important to him to look at them as metaphors rather than mechanisms.

The New Testament authors used metaphors and analogies to describe the significance of Jesus’ death. These were drawn from Scripture as well as legal, economic, relational, and battlefield images, to name just a few. But at times we confuse the metaphors for mechanisms and, instead of hearing them as analogies helping to explain the meaning of the Crucifixion, we read them literally as though they describe processes and transactions and formulas for how the cross “works.” It is the nature of metaphors and analogies that they break down when pressed too far or taken too literally.

The beauty of this book is that Adam Hamilton doesn’t try to show us which is the “correct” theory of the atonement. Instead, he guides us to see beauty and meaning in each one.

As I’ve noted, the use of these various metaphors, ten of which I’ve included in this book, is more like poetry than physics, more like art than algebra. This is why I’ve suggested that when we read the New Testament’s various “atonement theories” we’re meant to ask not, How does Jesus’ crucifixion work? but instead, What does it mean? What is it God is trying to say to us?

Added October 23, 2026: I wrote the above review before I knew that Adam Hamilton is running for United States Senate in Kansas. I think it bodes well for a lawmaker to be able to find good out of multiple atonement theories. Where I figure out “which one I agree with” – he shows us beauty in each one. I think that’s a good thing for someone who wants to represent all the people of his state.

AdamHamilton.com
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Review of The Fall of Iris Henley, by Jennifer Graham

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Fall of Iris Henley

by Jennifer Graham
read by Eva Kaminsky

Macmillan Audio, 2026. 8 hours, 32 minutes.
Review written October 20, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I put this audiobook on hold because it was very popular with our library customers, and it turns out that was a good tip. The Fall of Iris Henley is about a senior in high school who’s top girl on her cheer squad – the top of the pyramids and a flyer who does tricks in the air, caught by her squadmates.

But this year, their football team isn’t starting out in great form. They’ve lost a star player, Rocky, who was Iris’s boyfriend, and the cheer squad has lost the former top girl, Lynette, who had been Iris’s best friend. They were found together, dead, with the gun in Rocky’s hand. They’d been sleeping together behind Iris’s back, but nobody knew why Rocky would have killed them both.

And then an anonymous poster on their school’s private social media app comes up with a new theory – Iris did it. And that theory gains traction throughout the school. At first, her cheer team backs her up and sticks by her side, but something happens to challenge even their loyalty.

Iris was at a cheer sleepover the night in question, so she should have an alibi. Trouble is, after Rocky accidentally sent her a text that she knew was meant for some other girl, Iris got so drunk, she has no memory of the rest of the night.

The book is filled with cyberbullies and real-life bullies, constant questions for Iris about whom she can trust, and of course a conclusion filled with danger. Gripping suspense right from the beginning that feels all too realistic as cyberbullying gets way out of hand.

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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