{"id":370,"date":"2016-08-31T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/?p=370"},"modified":"2016-08-28T21:07:02","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T03:07:02","slug":"book-review-a-single-bead-by-stephanie-engelman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/book-review-a-single-bead-by-stephanie-engelman\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK REVIEW: A Single Bead by Stephanie Engelman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi, Aadi here. Today, I have a review by\u00a0Barb Szyszkiewicz of A Single Bead<\/a> by Stephanie Engleman. Check it out.<\/p>\n

Author Stephanie Engelman proves that a story\u00a0doesn\u2019t have\u00a0to be edgy to be compelling.\u00a0In the\u00a0new YA novel,\u00a0A Single Bead\u00a0(Pauline Teen, 2016)\u00a0teenage Kate\u00a0finds faith in an unlikely way: through the stories of others who have been touched by the prayers of her grandmother, killed in a plane crash a year ago.<\/p>\n

The novel opens with Kate\u2019s extended family gathered around the plane-crash site for a memorial service. Needing a moment to get away from the tension and grief, Kate stumbles toward a wooded area where she finds a shiny bead\u2013one from her grandmother\u2019s custom-made rosary that had silver beads with the initials of her loves ones engraved on each. Kate doesn\u2019t find just any bead. She finds the one with\u00a0her own\u00a0initials on it.<\/p>\n

Kate and her cousins go on to discover that other beads have been found, and that the people who received them have experienced physical or emotional healing. Could it be that her grandmother\u2019s prayers have such a deep effect?<\/p>\n

Thus begins a journey of faith for Kate, whose extended family is deeply Catholic but whose own immediate family is less engaged in the faith. But faith is exactly what\u2019s needed, because Kate\u2019s mom has fallen into a deep depression after the plane crash a year ago. Kate hopes that finding other pieces of the rosary will help heal her mom.<\/p>\n

This compelling novel\u00a0is appropriate for students in grades 5 and up and challenges the reader to lay aside the idea that a prayer or a sacramental can be a \u201cmagical\u201d thing. It is refreshing to read about an extended family whose life is centered on faith.<\/p>\n

\"images\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi, Aadi here. Today, I have a review by\u00a0Barb Szyszkiewicz of A Single Bead by Stephanie Engleman. Check it out. Author Stephanie Engelman proves that a story\u00a0doesn\u2019t have\u00a0to be edgy to be compelling.\u00a0In the\u00a0new YA novel,\u00a0A Single Bead\u00a0(Pauline Teen, 2016)\u00a0teenage Kate\u00a0finds faith in an unlikely way: through the stories of others who have been touched […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"BOOK REVIEW: A Single Bead by Stephanie Engelman #B4CT","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/images.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7xtYd-5Y","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dawnwitzke.com\/CatholicUnderground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}