The Heart Changer – Book Review

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My family loves to read. We are always looking for new books.  Recently, I got the chance to review The Heart Changer from Jarm Del Boccio, Author.

The Heart Changer

Can an Israelite captive, wrenched from all she loves, serve the very man who destroyed her village?

The Heart Changer

The story is told through the point of view of Miriam. She is a 12-year-old Israelite who is taken from her village in a raid and forced to serve the mistress to her captor, Naaman. Miriam faces her captivity with a wide range of confusing emotions – for her captor, her new acquaintances, and her god.

Why has this happened to her?

The Heart Changer
by Jarm Del Boccio
Genres: Children & Young Adult, Fiction, Middle Grade
ISBN: 9781620208687
112 pages

Family Read Aloud

We chose to approach this book as a family read-aloud. We will gather around as I read the book or as my older children take turns reading. In this case, it also involved a lot of play with our new puppy – he insisted on being apart of storytime.

The Heart Changer is not a challenging read but it is an emotional one. We often took breaks to talk about the situations as they were unfolding. While we talk about the realities of war, this is the first instance where we have read a book where a child was taken into slavery. There were lots of questions about the events that were unfolding in The Heart Changer.

The Teacher’s Guide

Jarm Del Boccio (’J’ pronounced as a ‘Y’), the author, has also provided the readers with a teacher’s guide.

The teacher’s guide introduces us to the author, as well as giving us some insight into Miriam’s character that is not in the actual book.

Within the teacher’s guide to The Heart Changer are questions to ponder about the book. With these suggestions, we were able to discuss more aspects of the novel in depth. If you struggle with talking to your children about the books they are reading and knowing what to ask, this teacher’s guide would be very helpful for you.

One thing that we really loved about the teacher’s guide was the included recipes. We experience life through all of our senses, so being able to experience the taste and smell of some authentic Syrian recipes was a nice touch to add.

Final Thoughts

The Heart Changer is not a typical genre (biblical fiction) of book for our family. That being said, we did enjoy it. We were able to discuss and learn about new concepts that we had never talked about before.

The teacher’s guide is definitely a nice asset to use in conjunction with the book if you are using The Heart Changer as a novel study for your home education plan.

If you want to read more reviews about The Heart Changer, click on the image below to read more reviews.