Book Review :: Body & Soul by Bethany Hamilton with Dustin Dillberg, L.Ac., PAS

Body & Soul is a new book by Bethany Hamilton. (Bethany Hamilton is probably most widely known for her shark attack story and the book-turned-movie, Soul Surfer.) Body & Soul is described as "a girl's guide to a fit, fun, and fabulous life". 

The book is beautifully done, with full-color, semi-glossy pages. The large format reminds me of reading a magazine. The content is divided into 9 chapters, and there is also additional multimedia content available using various electronic devices. (I didn't use the additional multimedia content, so I can't provide any review details on that.)

The majority of Body & Soul focuses on a clean, healthy lifestyle. I really appreciated the fact that Bethany specifically stated that the exterior shape and clothing size is not what makes a person healthy - I feel like this is something that our girls can never hear enough of.

Bethany is a Christian and doesn't hide the fact that a healthy life also includes a healthy relationship with God. Even though she didn't hide it, I felt like this book was much more heavily focused on body (exercise and nutrition) than it was on soul. I would have loved for there to have been more "soul food".

With the heavy exercise and nutrition focus, however, I felt like a few things could have been clarified a little bit more (such as a more thorough definition of "clean eating"). As an adult reading this book, I knew what she was addressing...but I feel as though many tweens/teens who are going to be reading this book will not fully grasp what terms like "clean eating" and "organic" really mean. (Even my children, when we as a family try to eat nutritious, mostly organic foods, still probably wouldn't fully understand.)

Obviously, with Bethany Hamilton's profession (and hobby) being surfing, there is a lot of talk about surfing in Body & Soul. Even so, she does state that is important for each person to find what types of exercise appeal to them and to follow that - so I think this can be inspiring to many more girls than just little surfers. (If you do have a little surfer, though, I would be sure this book makes it onto your bookshelf!)

This book isn't all about just written information - there are also 4 full workouts (with photos). There were a good amount of photos accompanying the workout descriptions, but there were some cases where I think a couple more photos would have been helpful. There are also a good amount of recipes (34 in the recipe chapter, plus others sprinkled throughout the book) - they sound delicious and are accompanied by beautiful, colorful photographs. There are recipes for breakfast, juices, smoothies, lunch, dinner, side dishes, snacks, and desserts.

Body & Soul is written with an obvious tween/teen tone (and is classified as Juvenile Nonfiction). I personally don't see a need to use some of the terms that were used in the book ("fave", "sesh", "BFF", etc.) - they seem to be used solely for the sake of appealing to tweens/teens...but in my opinion that just dumbs down what could have been quality information. As Bethany is a life-long surfer, there are definitely some surfer-type terms included as well (such as "rad", "gnarly", "rock", "stoked", etc.). The surfer tone is understandable, but I felt the tween/teen tone was unnecessary. I think with a few tweaks (mainly using whole words), this could have easily been a good, well-written book for both teens and adults.

I will be letting my 10 year old daughter read Body & Soul, but I am not sure how inspirational it will be for her at her current age. All in all, this was a good book to read and will be handy to keep around (particularly for the workouts and recipes).
FTC Declaration: The publisher has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book or advanced reading copy. This does not change the fact that I will give my honest opinion in my reviews.

Book Review :: Parenting the Wholehearted Child by Jeannie Cunnion

Parenting the Wholehearted Child is a great resource for any parent who is looking to parent with grace.

The book is divided into four parts. The first two parts of the book are not exclusive to parents - they discuss grace in a way that would be good for any Christian to read. Once you reach the third and fourth parts of the book, the discussion geared toward parenting really starts to kick in. If you could see the flags I put throughout the book (to mark the parts that stood out to me), you would see the majority of the flags in part three of the book. Part three is titled "Growing in Christlike Character" and each chapter covers various "grace fruits". The other parts of Parenting the Wholehearted Child are there to give background and support, but I feel that part three really stands out as the "meat" of the book.

Although the book does have many helpful tips and examples, I must admit that this book was not an easy one for me to get through. Parenting the Wholehearted Child wasn't a book that was just calling for me to pick it up and read, but it did give me good ideas every time I picked it up. It is hard to review a book like this, because the content is great, but the delivery wasn't particularly appealing for me. I do wish that there had been more examples throughout the book. (I would have especially liked to read anecdotes from families other than just the author's.)

All in all, I think that Parenting the Wholehearted Child was great to read - our family has already started putting into practice things I read about in the book. I am glad that I read this book and would suggest it for anyone who is looking to parent with grace.
FTC Declaration: The publisher has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book or advanced reading copy through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. This does not change the fact that I will give my honest opinion in my reviews.

WINNER :: Lupus Awareness Month Giveaway

Thanks to all who stopped by and commented on my Lupus Awareness Month giveaway...and a very special thanks to each of you who are followers of this blog.

Christina's Creations

Congratulations!

Please send me an e-mail with your US mailing address so I can get your prize out to you.
{You can find my e-mail address in my blog header or on my Blogger profile.}

If you'd like to learn more about lupus, be sure to check out the Lupus Foundation of America's website.

And if you haven't ordered my 'All About Hope' stamp set yet, please do. You can find it here.
{The winner will have 48 hours to contact me with their information.}
{Due to shipping costs, giveaways are available to US mailing addresses only.}

Growing In Unity :: WINNER

Thanks to all who stopped by and commented throughout my week as the Growing In Unity gal...and a very special thanks to each of you who are followers of this blog.

jengd

Congratulations!

Please send me an e-mail with your US mailing address and the two Itty Bittys you would like to receive so I can get your information to Unity.
{You can find my e-mail address in my blog header or on my Blogger profile.}

If you didn't win - you still have today to enter in my Lupus Awareness Month giveaway!
{Due to shipping costs, giveaways are available to US mailing addresses only.}