99 Things Every Girl Should Know: Practical Insights for Loving God, Yourself, and Others
Neely McQueen
Group Publishing, 2011, 121 pp., $5.99
Unsinkable: A Young Woman’s Courageous Battle on the High Seas
Abby Sunderland and Lynn Vincent
Thomas Nelson, 2011, 240 pp. $22.99
Cupidity: 50 Stupid Things People Do for Love
Hayley and Michel DiMarco
Tyndale House Publishers, 2010, 246 pp., $14.99
Praying for Your Future Husband: Preparing Your Heart for His
Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer
Multnomah Books, 2011, 224 pp., $13.99
“You are beautiful, and you are of great worth.” Neely McQueen chooses these words as the beginning and ending of 99 Things Every Girl Should Know because she believes these truths are rarely understood by girls. Such truths fill 99 Things as McQueen provides girls with the book she wishes had been available when she was a teen.
The genius in this book lies in the efficiency of McQueen’s writing. The list of 99 truths covers a breadth of topics: boys, family, gossip, sex, the media, education, shopping, saving, women of the Bible and more. McQueen’s love for her audience is made clear in how—despite the enormous scope of her list—she delivers each truth in one paragraph. Because of the knack the author has for nailing a universal issue on the head, I would be confident that any young lady in my youth group could pick up this book, flip to any page and be engaged and edified.
Aside from McQueen’s writing, 99 Things is a feature-rich text that will appeal to young women. The book creates visual appeal with various fonts, quotations, verses, statistics, tweets and student stories that effectively break up and illustrate the list of truths. Also, each of the chapters ends with a challenge to the reader consisting of reflection, discussion and prayer prompts. For these reasons and many more, I look forward to giving my daughter a copy of 99 Things.
Cupidity: 50 Stupid Things People Do for Love and How to Avoid Them, by popular relationship and marriage authors Hayley and Michael DiMarco, is similar to 99 Things in several ways. First, Cupidity is rich with visual appeal. Using various fonts, tables, lists, graphics and other text features, the book feels more like a magazine of engaging articles than a book with 50 meaty chapters. Second, Cupidity doesn’t waste words. Though topics are treated with considerably more detail—Cupidity takes twice as many pages to cover half the number of items treated by McQueen—each chapter gets straight to its point, and bolded sentences are used to make immediately apparent the chapter’s core message. Finally, the DiMarcos know their audience. Their topics are relevant, and readers quickly recognize situations in which they’ve either blundered in the past or are in the process of blundering.
Despite these similarities, Cupidity is different from 99 Things in that it is focuses on the realms of singleness, dating and marriage. What I love most about Cupidity is that while striving to communicate to the next generation of Christians, the authors don’t shy away from age-old biblical teaching on sin, selfishness, forgiveness and other relationship matters. I found the DiMarcos’ treatment of handling sin in relationships especially powerful.
For youth workers and parents, Cupidity would be an excellent book to read aloud and discuss with your teens when they begin taking an interest in romantic relationships.
Most young women can recall when they began dreaming about The One; unfortunately, many can recount stories of how these desires for future husbands have led them or their friends astray. In Praying for your Future Husband: Preparing Your Heart for His, Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer provide a powerful, constructive expression of these desires with plenty of real-life stories, quotations and Scripture references. The authors aim to inspire young women to bring their requests to a Father God who loves them. In the process of praying for the husband God may have for them, readers will find themselves transformed.
Gunn and Goyer use a variety of methods to make this a book that young women will benefit from and enjoy. For starters, it helps that Gunn and Goyer have different backgrounds, which they share in short snippets throughout the book. Gunn’s story is the more traditional of the two—she wrote letters to her future husband as a young lady, thought she had found him, had her heart broken, and ultimately trusted God to bring her husband to her at the perfect time. Goyer, on the other hand, began praying for her future mate as a pregnant teen. The contrasts and similarities in the two authors’ histories make for an inspiring look at the sufficiency of the grace of God. In addition to the authors’ personal stories, Praying for Your Future Husband contains numerous anecdotes of other women who prayed and saw God answer.
Like Cupidity, this book makes a great gift to the young woman who is starting to show an interest in boys; however, while Cupidity aims at both genders, Praying for Your Future Husband is for girls only. Because of the ample discussion questions for each chapter, Gunn and Goyer’s book would work great for a female small group book study.
At age 13, Abby Sunderland began dreaming of something that had nothing to do with finding The One. Abby wanted to sail around the world—by herself. Several years after the inception of this dream, Abby had sailed nearly three-quarters of the way around the planet. Despite her skill and perseverance, a rogue wave in the Indian Ocean snapped short her dreams of circumnavigation; upon her rescue, international headlines decried the parents who had allowed a teenage girl to embark on such a journey. In Unsinkable: A Young Woman’s Courageous Battle on the High Seas, readers will enjoy a true story that addresses the gap between our culture’s expectations of its teenagers and the amazing things teens are capable of.
Unsinkable reminded me, in several places, of the Rebelution, the teenage movement against low expectations made famous by Alex and Brett Harris’ Do Hard Things. I happily would hand this book to any teenage girl, but it will be especially relevant to girls who are struggling to believe that teenagers are capable of great things.
Thankfully, Unsinkable is well-written and hard to put down. Readers will quickly find themselves at home with Abby’s voice. I found myself wishing I could meet the Sunderland family; the unique vision that drives this family’s activities is anchored in Christ and filled with simple joy. As a youth worker, I want this book to be in the hands of as many students as possible.
