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Heaven is for Real
Non-Fiction
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Heaven is For Real - Echo Stewart
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The story begins with a flashback in a place called “The Crawl-a-see-um” where the Burpo’s go on a vacation after a couple of rough times that Todd Burpo was going through, such as a broken leg, kidney stones and a cancer scare. On the vacation, Colton gets, what they thought was a flu virus but really it ended up being appendicitis. Colton first goes to the metro-Denver hospital, where they assure them that it wasn’t appendicitis. Later, when Colton isn’t getting better they take him to the Great Plains Regional Medical Center in North Platte, where they find out that Colton really did have appendicitis. Colton goes through surgery and is cured of his fatal disease. He is taken home and the family can finally rest. The Burpo’s end up with a lot of bills they need to pay off and can hardly pay off all of them, until hundreds of people, friends, family and even strangers start sending them all money after hearing about what happened and it totals out to just the amount they need to pay off the bills.
The author ends his flashback and now begins with the family traveling to see their new nephew 4 months after Colton’s surgery. As they are heading up there, Todd sees the hospital and jokingly asked Colton if he would like to go back there. Colton starts telling his father all about his experience in the hospital and how he met Jesus and the angels sang to him and that he sat on Jesus’s lap. The parents are bewildered at his statements and ask him if it was just a dream he had. The author then goes on with the story talking about all of Colton’s experiences in Heaven. For instance, Colton tells his parents all about sitting on Jesus’s lap and what people look like in heaven, like Todd’s grandpa (Pop) looks much younger than he did when he actually died in his 60’s. Colton also talks about all of the beautiful colors in heaven (looking like a rainbow) and that there are many children in heaven and that Jesus loves all of them so much. Lastly, Colton tells his mother that he met his sister in heaven (which ends up showing us that Sonja had a miscarriage before Colton.)
Sonja has another child, a little boy, (which they consider their 4th after finding out about their miscarried daughter) which they named Colby which results in a baby sitter named Ali who hears about Colton wanting to go back to heaven because he missed his sister up in heaven. In the end Todd tells the reader why he and his family wrote the book and answers questions for people that asked about Colton’s experience in heaven.
One problem that occurs in the book was Colton having his appendix burst and causing him to be ill. This problem is what sets up the story into Colton’s experience of going to heaven and seeing incredible things there. Therefore the solution was Colton getting his surgery and his life was saved.
A theme I recognized in the book was not giving up hope because during Colton's surgery the Burpo family almost lost faith in God and lost faith in the doctors being able to save their son. In the end though, Colton recovers and the family realizes their mistake and praise the Lord for saving their son. Their faith grows even stronger because of Colton's experience in Heaven and that God brought him back to his family.
I learned that even if times seem tough you have to stay strong and always have hope, you should never give up even if someone says that the outcome may look uncertain.
I rate the book 4 1\2 stars out of 5. I really did enjoy the story overall, my favorite part was finding out about the family's miscarried child, it really made me feel what they were going through when they lost her and that when Colton came along he gave them new hope.