This story of a little girl who turns to God to clean her heart so she can see others through God’s eyes is the perfect gift for Valentine’s Day! What better way to say “I love you” to your kids than to give them insight into how to have their heart feel love and joy!
Jackie Chirco Cogswell is a Family Physician and mother of three. While searching for entertaining Christian books, she was led by the Holy Spirit to fill that need by writing this book. A Heart Ready to Fly is the first in a series of novels, the Giggleheart Adventures. This series is designed to entertain and teach families about how God’s Word applies to each of our lives. Her books are also intended to encourage our hearts to giggle in a way that only God’s joy can provide.
A Heart Ready to Fly is the story of 8-year-old Sophia Giggleheart, a little girl with a big attitude. The book is printed in large print for young children to read it to themselves, but is truly a book any parent or grandparent will enjoy reading out loud. It is 113 pages long and divided into 13 chapters with plenty of fun illustrations.
I love the way the author makes the character so real. Its very easy to relate to her. When she talks about how “grossed out” she is by her drooling brother, or the embarrassment she feels when her baby brother cries in public and everyone is looking at them she truly becomes “us”. Kids will definitely relate to Sophia, but she is typical of not just kids, but we adults, as well.
Then in a dream she learns what a discerning heart is, as she watches peoples hearts go through the x-ray scanner to reveal what is truly inside their hearts. Sophia is afraid to have her own heart examined, and learns that often we find fault and are annoyed by others to cover our own ugly hearts. Once she sees the pride and judgment in her own heart, she prays for God to clean her heart. Finally, she wakes up to have new “eyes” in her heart toward those around her. Sophia learns to take responsibility for her own thoughts and feelings turning to God to clean her heart-a lesson we all need to practice.
Jackie has a true gift for using the everyday situations in the book to explain some very difficult concepts. Using airport security to parallel how God sees the “bad” in our hearts is an clear and eye opening analogy. She then uses a playground slide. She explains that being on top looking all around and is to see is what it is like when we let God into our heart. However, we can begin to judge others, and slide down to land hard on our own backside. “The slide is even “J” shaped like judgment”. The illustrations by Shelley Johannes truly reinforce the lesson being taught so clearly in the text.
Ultimately, kids will come away from this book knowing that God looks at our hearts to see who we are. And, that we should look to God to clean our own hearts so we too can have eyes and ears that see and hear others as God sees them!
This book is current available on Amazon.com for $14.95 and from divineinspirationpublishing.com for $10.95.
Looking forward to the next installment Super Luke faces His Bully coming soon from Divine Inspiration Publishing.
