I wanted to make everyone aware of an awesome Advent Devotional Series that our family has LOVED!! The first (of 4) book is called Jotham's Journey. You read one chapter each night aloud with your family and then have a short guided discussion. Each chapter ended with our boys begging us to read the next chapter and groaning that they had to wait until the next evening to hear another chapter. The 4 books each follow a fictional (but historically possible) character (shepherd, wiseman, etc.) on a journey that ends up in Bethlehem at the birth of Christ. The stories are a little intense for young ones, but our youngest son loved them starting at age 6. Our high school boys and my husband and I also loved them (We often caught my husband trying to read ahead!!).

Be advised that this is a perilous journey, at times. We have 4 sons (3, 5, 10, and 12) and it was really only the older two who were involved in the daily reading. Jotham finds himself in some frightening situations with some scary characters at times, so the use of this for our family ended up differently than I expected, but I didn't feel like it was negative, just caused me to revamp my plan. Our big boys LOVED reading this and it turned out being a sweet activity between them and dad.

My three children were young (5 to 10) when we first began reading Jotham's Journey. Reading this book together became a yearly tradition. They took turns lighting the advent candles and blowing them out! The story is very suspenseful. It deals with rebellion and it's consequences. At the end of each chapter are prophetic scriptures of Christ's birth and the challenge to prepare our hearts to receive the Savior.

My children are all young adults now. I am thankful for the impact this book had on all of us.

This year I purchased the book for my nephew and his 8 children.

I have been reading this to my three kids (girl, girl, boy) 8 years old. Everyday they beg me to read it and it they have a hard time when I have to stop. As previous reviews state, it does get suspenseful and some parts are scary, but this opens up opportune times to speak about evil in the world, etc. I love the scriptures at the end of the chapter and words that make us reflect our spiritual walk and perspective on Christmas. Also, the kids love picking up on people and places they have read about in the Bible previously, like a historical fiction book. I do recommend this book.

Our family absolutely loves this book as well as the others in the series!! this was our second year reading Jotham and we enjoyed it just as much:)!