From the Bookshelf of What's the Name of That Book???…

Crusade in Jeans

Thea Beckman

Why we're reading this: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...…more
[close] https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Jul 26, 2010 Lisa Vegan rated it really liked it

Shelves: novel, speculative-fiction, readbooks-female-author-or-illust, historical-fiction, time-travel, young-adult, z2010, reviewed, childrens, fiction

This ended up being a very satisfying read. I’m sure if I’d read this at age 10, it would have been a 5 star book for me. I would have particularly enjoyed the episodic adventures of Dolf and the children when I was that age.

I very quickly had to suspend my adult sensibilities major disbelief and try to put myself back to my 9 or 10 or 11 year old self, eager for a fantasy novel. I’m not talking about the time travel aspect, but there is no way that scientists, let alone a father, would let happ This ended up being a very satisfying read. I’m sure if I’d read this at age 10, it would have been a 5 star book for me. I would have particularly enjoyed the episodic adventures of Dolf and the children when I was that age.

I very quickly had to suspend my adult sensibilities major disbelief and try to put myself back to my 9 or 10 or 11 year old self, eager for a fantasy novel. I’m not talking about the time travel aspect, but there is no way that scientists, let alone a father, would let happen what happened at the beginning of this book, especially not in that hasty and ill thought out manner.

I became so curious so I had to look up the history, and I found living history. Interesting. Interesting take the book has too. A friend when we were fifteen was interested in children’s crusades and I think that they deepened her Christian beliefs; I wonder what she’d think about new thinking on the subject.

This particular story and its opinions felt very 1970s to me. The author wrote it and it was published first in the Netherlands (great translation, I think) but it did not have a foreign feel to me.

I liked how the religious-not religious and those from different centuries learned from one another.

As a non-religious person I liked that Dolf was not religious but wondered throughout the book if that would last, and I also wondered about whether the whole big picture would change. I loved how that was resolved. It felt so real that only the time travel aspect felt like speculative fiction. I do wonder how some religious Christians would feel about this children’s novel, and I wonder if it’s on any banned lists.

Something I did not like was when a narrator comes in occasionally to explain what the Middle Ages were like; the information is interesting and I’m glad it was included, but I wish it had been incorporated in a less clumsy way. Another negative was the extremely abrupt ending, reminiscent of A Wrinkle in Time, but I forgive it for that. In fact, it’s fun to imagine the reactions of some of the characters in the book after the what happens at the end of the story in the book.

I read this for the International Books Club at the Children's Books group. It's the November book, so I'm ahead for once! ...more

16 likes · Like · see review