A Big Year for Lily, Book 3 by Mary Ann Kinsinger and Suzanne Woods Fisher - REVIEW

My Take:
5 stars!
This is the third book in The Adventures of Lily Lapp, A Big Year for Lily, and I think my favorite thus far! There will be a fourth in this series due out later which will complete it. These are absolutely charming books!
These Chapter Books are gems just waiting to be discovered by little girls ages 8-12, or anyone who likes/loves to read about the Amish, even adults! Surprisingly, I learned a lot from reading these books as well, and it amazed me because I read a lot of Amish books and thought I knew all there was to know. Boy, was I wrong. There are things in this series of books I did not know about such as the things the children go through at their different ages, what's expected of them and more.
Yes, there are the Little House on the Prairie books, and you could almost mistake these books as similar to them, but these books go further than those and are even better because these books have real, live people who are living this way "today" and every day! Little House, meet the Amish, and a little girl named Lily Lapp who are alive and living this way for the last three centuries, and will be well into the future!
This book is about Lily turning 10. This is quite a year for her! Turning 10 brings about a lot of big changes and responsibilities for Lily. My favorite is her new dress. When the girls turn 10, they graduate into getting to wear the big girl dresses! This was an anticipated event for Lily! She got to go pick out the fabric for her new dress and proudly wear it in church, with a little drama added to it. My other favorite scene was when her brother gets his tongue stuck to something metal, in the winter! She said she felt bad but not to bad because she learned brothers were always thinking of things they shouldn't be doing! Yes, sometimes even the amish children are up to no good, just like English children, playing tricks on each other and other things, but they learn important lessons from them, and the parents make sure the children are aware of what they or their friends did is good or bad.
These books also have beautiful pencil drawings/illustrations here and there throughout the book. The artist, Tim Foley, did a beautiful job!
Grab this book and add it to your library. It will be an addition that will get read by many!
I received this book for FREE from the publisher, Revell, a Division of Baker Publishing Group and LitFuse Publicity in exchange to read and write a review about it. It is NOT required for this review to be either positive or negative, but of my own honest opinion. "Free" means I was provided with ZERO MONIES to read this book nor to write this review, but to enjoy the pure pleasure of reading it. I am disclosing this information in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255, http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

About the Authors:

Mary Ann Kinsinger was raised Old Order Amish in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. She met and married her husband, whom she knew from school days and started a family. After they chose to leave the Amish church, Mary Ann began a blog, A Joyful Chaos, as a way to capture her warm memories of her childhood for her own children. From the start, this blog found a ready audience and even captured the attention of key media players, such as the influential blog AmishAmerica and the New York Times. She lives in Pennsylvania.

Suzanne Woods Fisher In no particular order, is a wife, mother, writer, lifelong student of the Bible, raiser of puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind, a gardener and a cook...the latter two with sporadic results.

Suzanne has loved to write since she was a young teen. After college, she started to write for magazines and became a contributing editor for Christian Parenting Today magazine. Her family moved to Hong Kong for four years, just as the internet was developing, and she continued to write articles in a 44-story high-rise apartment, sending manuscripts 7,000 miles away with a click of a key.

After returning from Hong Kong, Suzanne decided to give her first novel a try. For four and a half months, she worked on an antediluvian computer in a cramped laundry room. She didn't even tell her husband what she was up to. When the novel was completed, she told her family at dinner one night that she had written a book. "That's why there's no food in this house!" said her slightly insensitive sons.
Writing, for Suzanne, is a way to express a love of God and His word. With every book or article, she hopes readers get a sense of what faith really looks like in the daily grind. She hopes they realize that life can be hard, but God is good, and never to confuse the two.

Suzanne can be found online at: www.suzannewoodsfisher.com