Author: Jackie Kendall

ISBN: 1596690054         

The following review was contributed by: Ernest Dempsey,  pen name of Karim Khan: To read more of Karim's Review CLICK HERE 

Over the years, Hollywood movies have stamped on the layman’s mind an image of a typical American family as a rubber band stretched by stressors of self-centeredness and unbridled individualism. This stamp is particularly lasting in case of teen folk. As we read Jackie Kendall’s The Mentoring Mom (New Hope Publishers, Alabama, 2006), the Hollywood’s stamp is washed away and the American family appears in a new light-that of love, care, and trust. Surely you would need a mentoring mom. 

Jackie Kendall addresses caring mothers in her book, sharing the eleven images (what she calls stamps) she imprinted on her children’s lives-images that model Christ- to help them grow up in God’s image. Kendall tells simple, true nonfiction stories from her own family life and asks the readers ‘Questions for Reflection’ at the end of each chapter. It is her excellent writing style, lively humor, and prodigy of construing thoughts in the most beautiful sentences that makes her book a wonderful gift to moms and everyone else.

The Mentoring Mom carries invaluable lessons: loving the Lord by way of loving fellow human beings, the difference between mere learning the word ‘God’ and knowing God intimately, and above all, the true spirit of a real family. An indelible lesson of the book, of course, is the vitality of ‘wholesome grief’. In Kendall’s words: tears do not bring back the one who has died, but tears do bring us back to the life that must be lived without the ones who have died.

As an author Jackie Kendall’s words work wonders. The reason is not hard to figure: you can actually feel the persons, she tells of, in their own voices as if the author has a miraculous force by which she transforms herself into the soul of the one she is talking about. You can identify your life’s instances with Kendall family’s history of love and benevolence. This is indeed an achievement.

Jackie Kendall’s book is a must read because we all need Kendall’s wisdom’s light to arrive safely at our destiny of peace.