Peter Pollock

As usual, I received this book because of a GoodReads giveaway. Despite that kind consideration my candid opinion follows.

This book, written for children, is almost too short to include a synopsis. A mysterious professor moves into a small town, builds a new school for nine children and teaches them the story of Easter. There you have it in a nutshell.

Textually, this is a children's book. Large print, small vocabulary and simple themes around the origins of the Easter holiday. The professor show more is lucky enough to have a time machine so he can take the children back in time to see the situation first hand. All this, I suspect, is engaging enough for small children. As religious texts go it's minimally preachy though it does give the usual admonishments of "putting God first" and all that.

The only other real thing of note is that for a children's book it is amazingly devoid of pictures. It's 68 pages of large text and not a single illustration of any sort. Worse, the cover has a photo of a child writing, one of the immortal banes of elementary school. I couldn't get my 8-year-old to read this even with a significant bribe.

In summary, this is a religious story about Easter but the packaging and presentation is likely to be very off-putting to the eventual consumer, the children themselves. Perhaps a fine story to read aloud but don't expect the children to find it on the bookshelf and excitedly bring it to you. They'll have to be coerced to get past the lacking visual elements. show less

Peter Pollock's own story of being part of the great South African side before they were banned due to apartheid, how he came to faith in Jesus and his subsequent calling to be an evangelist - hence God's Fast Bowler, South Africa's return to international cricket and his own role as chairman of selectors. Good stuff.

This book is for a total newbie, who knows nothing about hosting, even quite rudimentary things. As such the book does a good job covering the basics. At the same time the book includes relatively extensive coverage of stuff related to VPS and dedicated server. People who use dedicated server already know the standard basic stuff. Therefore, the book suffers somewhat from target audience identity confusion.

There are 4 copies of this book in our library - ideal for a small Bible study group.