Both published by David C. Cook, these books aim to not just encourage the habit of devotions but also to encourage the living of devotion. Each includes a Scripture passage for the day, a short application idea, a place for response or thoughts, and a couple tips for making it happen. Some of these are entertaining, like "Tell your buddies to punch you in the arm if you complain about a teacher" in the devotional about respecting authority, others are more involved like the Weekend project ideas that include art, activities or action ideas. Both versions include fun graphics, pages marked with days of the week to help stay on track and an interesting range of topics that are applied to every day situations.
Truth or Dare, the girls' edition, makes more use of visual elements, like puzzles, graphs or charts that can be filled in, the boys' less so. A non-reader may find the boy's version a little less compelling in this respect because it looks more word-heavy, and the font on the devotionals is quite small in comparison to the rest of the page. But if used with some parental involvement, the ideas are definitely geared to boys. Another small consideration is that while there is plenty of room to write responses and ideas, the paperback binding makes putting this into practice a little awkward as the book doesn't want to lay open.
Both devotionals cover a range of topics and all are handled discreetly and appropriately for the age groups. Overall, I give them two thumbs up!
Review copies provided by The B&B Media Group.
