It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card author is:
and the book:
Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City (June 1, 2011)
***Special thanks to
Susan Otis/Creative Resources for sending me a review copy.***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joanne Kraft is a sought-after speaker who loves to encourage women. She has been published in Today’s Christian Woman, In Touch, ParentLife, Kyria and P31 Woman magazine. A leader of Inspire Christian Writers, she serves as a marriage study group leader, and works as a 911 dispatcher in Sacramento County, California. Kraft is married and has four children.
Visit the author's website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Just Too Busy is one mother’s story of getting off the merry-go-round of her family’s over-commitment. When everything their life seemed like a marathon race, Joanne Kraft and her husband decided to take a “radical sabbatical”—a year-long absence from any of their four children’s organized after-school activities. Memories made, new traditions started, lessons learned, and how their family’s legacy was enriched are shared, spiced with a liberal helping of light-hearted humor.
Product Details:
List Price: $14.99
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City (June 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0834126095
ISBN-13: 978-0834126091
AND NOW...Click the LOOK INSIDE! Button to view the FIRST Chapter:
My Review:
Do you ever feel like our author did? She described her family’s crazy schedule by saying she was a “daytime zombie in a minivan, shuttling children back and forth from soccer practice to dance lessons and from Girls Scouts to baseball games.” Our culture expects us to stay busy. Kids are looked at as strange if they aren’t enrolled in sports, music/art, and every other activity that keeps them busy all day long. From after school activities to summer day camps, family time is being spent running around ferrying our kids to every place imaginable and eating on the run instead of enjoying family meals around the table together. This is where Joanne Kraft’s idea of a radical sabbatical comes into play. She and her family gave up every activity that that required them to run the kids around for one full year. Instead they had family time, and a specific day each month that was carved out for family field trips.
Kraft spends only 5 of the 20 chapters really talking about their radical sabbatical. The rest of the book is spent on how busy our society is, the dangers of busyness, and the value of saying no to busyness. I would have loved to see the ratios switched and read more about their adventure of a radical sabbatical. I would be curious as to how they filled their time, what new things they did, besides just the family field trips. Did they do anything as individuals, such as church youth activities. The concept of saying no to every extra activity was new and unique. I know of people who have only allowed their kids to do one activity at a time, but never have I heard of people cutting out all activities altogether.
The idea of this book intrigued me, but it didn’t deliver like it could have. So I give this book 3.5 stars.
I received this book free from First Wild Card Tours for the purpose of this review.
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