Sarah’s Wish
www.sarahbooks.net
$10.99 with Free shipping. Specials available for purchasing with additional books from the series.
We received, free for our use for this review, a copy of the book Sarah’s Wish by Jim Baumgardner. This was a truly wonderful book to read with my children. This is the first book in a series featuring Sarah Smith, a 12 year old girl living in Ohio in 1858. The book is a living book telling us the story of Sarah and her involvement with the Underground Railroad. One of the fun features of this book is an included link to download an audio version of this book. I especially enjoyed being able to play this for my children and save my voice from reading out loud. 🙂
Mr. Baumgardner is a grandfather of homeschooled grandchildren and they were his initial audience. Although first written for homeschooled children, these timeless, engaging stories will appeal to children and families of any sort. Mr. Baumgardner is a descendent of the character Dr. Baum(gardner) from the series. From perusing the website, one also learns that Sarah was indeed a real girl who lived with Mr. Baumgardner’s great, great grandparents in Wapakoneta, OH. There are many other interesting tidbits to be found on the website relating to the history of the time period of the series.
Mr. Baumgardner is currently working on the fourth, as yet unnamed, book of the series. This first story, Sarah’s Wish is shorter than the subsequent books with only 123 pages. This is not to say this book is a "light read" in any way. It is the perfect length to draw us into Sarah’s world and leave us wanting to read more. The second book is titled Sarah’s Promise and the third in the series is Sarah’s Escape. The books have been referred to as Christian fiction. Mr. Baumgardner has said he prefers the category of Young Adult fiction. While the books do not hide their character’s Christianity, that is not the purpose of these stories. When I typically read Young Adult fiction, the story line is a bit above what I like for my eldest daughter (8 yr. old) to read. These are wonderful family books. The reading is definitely at a level above where my daughter reads, but the story was enjoyed by the entire family–Mama, Daddy and all of our children-the 8 yr. old down to the 3 yr. old boy.
Mr. Baumgardner has a newsletter you can subscribe to which we have enjoyed as well. We are hoping to keep adding these books to our library for enjoyment reading as well as educational reading when we study this period in history.
To see what other crew members have to say about this series, check out the links from here.