Bunny's First Spring by Sally Lloyd-Jones

Bunny's First Spring by Sally Lloyd-Jones is a delightful read-to-me children's book on the renewal of spring.  Bunny is born in the spring when the earth is warming and grows and plays in the summer.  The earth is growing and green and all is good.  Everything around is growing and lush.  Then something begins to happen.  The days turn cool and the green turns drab and brown.  Things start leaving.  First the leaves fall off the trees and there are no more frogs in the pond.  Bunny grows fearful and thinks that his beautiful earth must be dying.  Bunny is getting colder and more afraid so he does what he has always done.  He runs into his hole to his mama. He gets sleepy and falls to sleep with his family.  And he sleeps and sleeps until once again the world renews into Spring.

This is a great delightful book on the way of the world and how the seasons change and how the animals react to the change.  It would be a good book to read to children of a young age.  It has many colorful pictures for them to enjoy and not many sentences on each page which with my children anyway that was important to them that the pages are turned fairly quickly during the reading of the story.  I would recommend this book for toddler through school age children.
I received this book from Booksneeze for this review.

When Mercy Rains by Kim Vogel Sawyer

When Mercy Rains by Kim Vogel Sawyer is the first installment in the Zimmerman Restoration Trilogy so I expect that we can expect to have 2 more novels from this great Amish/Mennonite romance author.  The book begins by giving the background of Suzanne Zimmerman's teenage years.  Back to her mother sending her off to an unwed mothers home to have her baby and then give it away.  Now 20 years later as Suzanne is raising her only child as a single parent.  She has done well.  She has friends, she went to college to become a nurse, her daughter, Alexa, is a 19 year old to be proud of but she still misses her family and home.  That is until her brother, Clete writes her a letter and begs her to come home and take care of her mother.  Can she return to care for the woman who sent her away as a pregnant seventeen year old?  And what about her old boyfriend who presumably still lives there with his new family?  Can she forgive the family who discarded her when she most needed them and help them when they most need her?  Will the community forgive her indiscretions and treat her well or at least understand that she was young?  So many questions and to find them out read this book.

As a lover of Amish/Mennonite romances I quickly read this novel in a little over a day.  It is well written and easily carries the interest of the reader.  Ms Sawyer is as always a good author and it is a pleasure to read her work.  Thank-you for this newest beginnings a the series.
This book was provided by Blogging for Books for this review.

A Woodland Miracle by Ruth Reid

A Woodland Miracle by Ruth Reid is the newest book in the Amish Wonders series. 
What do a good looking trained shoemaker with pretty girls hanging off of him from sunny Florida have in common with a crippled woman with a chip on her shoulder from the cold timberland of Badger Creek, Michigan?  Almost nothing but a common love of Christ and being raised in a loving Amish home. 
Good-looking Ben and his best friend Toby have just been caught trespassing in a hotel swimming pool cooling off after a hot day working for Toby's dad.  Ben's dad has had enough.  So it is off to work in a timber camp in Michigan for his uncle.  Ben has heard that there is 3 girls for every boy so how hard can it be?  Well for one thing he has never felt it this cold.  And the girl who the boys ran into at the station, could she be any more unfriendly?  Then Ben and Toby end up at her house because of the horrible cold rain and a washed out road.  Finding out the her name is Grace and there is only her aunt and little sister living there doesn't help except that Grace seems to be the only unfriendly one there.  They find themselves sleeping in the dark, cold, smelly barn's loft under a pile of covers while they wait for a ride to the bishop's house.  When they finally get to the bishop's home they find out that he is one of the few men still in the community as the rest are in the timber camp.  Ben and Toby find themselves helping the bishop with some of the community needs and getting to know the neighbors.  Everyone it seems is friendly enough except for Grace.  So who is Ben drawn to---Grace of course.  Then things start disappearing and they hear in town that there are dangerous men on the loose.  Can Ben and Grace solve this mystery of who these men are before they do something terrible to Grace?  Do Grace and Ben find love in this cold cold community?   Read this book to find out.
I immediately liked this book and even though I had not read the first book of the series easily understood the plot and met the characters of the novel.  Ms Reid knows how to draw in the Amish romance reader.  I would recommend this novel for Amish romance reader of any age.
I received this book from Booksneeze for this review.

Wildwood Creek by Lisa Wingate

Wildwood Creek by Lisa Wingate is a novel once again set at Moses Lake of, "If you're lucky enough to be at the lake, you're lucky enough" fame.  There are 4 books in this series but these are definitely stand alone books.  In this book particularly the people who live at Moses Lake are only slightly mentioned as they drive through the community on the way to Wildwood Creek settlement.  This book is told in the present day--there is a casting call for a docudrama reenactment movie being filmed of the settling of Wildwood Creek in 1861 and Allie Kirkland and her best friend, Kim get parts for the show.  In addition, the novel tells the story of 1861 when Bonnie Rose and her 9 year old sister Maggie Mae come to Wildwood Creek with a group of settlers to start a school for the community children.  Bonnie Rose O'Brien is a soiled woman by the day's standard because she and her sister had been captured in a raid by the Comanche and taken into the lodge as little better than a slave woman and she carried the scars on her neck of the rope they tied her with to make her run behind them. Maggie had fared a little better by being adopted by a woman who had just lost her baby.  They had been rescued and then educated but still Bonnie carried the shame of first being Irish and 2nd being a soiled woman.  The man who offered her the job made her drop the last name and she became only Bonnie Rose.  The history is vague and requires much research so in the reenactment Allie and Kim rely on Stewart from the library to help research the times.  The only thing that they know is that in the settlement people start to disappear and there is a ballad that the locals sing which seems to blame Bonnie. As young women they are looking for excitement and they certainly find it in this summer adventure/job.
I really liked this book.  It is a love story but that is just in the background of the true nature of the mystery of the settlement of Wildwood Creek.  Anyone could read this but I think it is mostly a women's novel for those of at least middle school age.  There is no sexual content nor language problems for the young.  There is some of the slave talk which is written phonically so would possibly be difficult reading for the younger.
I received this book from Bethany House for this review.