Review of Snatched Up to Heaven!
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Review of Snatched Up to Heaven!
Snatched Up to Heaven by Jemima Paul and Arvind Paul offers an intriguing interpretation of two children's dreams. The premise is that two sisters have identical or similar nightmares in which they are transported to heaven and hell. While there, kids encounter and learn a variety of things that a young child's vocabulary would not allow them to comprehend at the time. When they wake up, they tell their parents, who are taken aback by what they hear and interpret it as the youngsters seeing visions of things beyond our natural world. The parents not only wrote down what was said but also videotaped it, so there was a strong record of the accounts. At times, I felt as if the parents' support and fixation with their daughter's religious dreams and experiences were excessive. Having been an 8-year-old myself, this novel made me wonder how the girls were unknowingly influenced by their parents' perceptions and ideas. I almost believe their "visions" would be more powerful and meaningful if they were more skeptical or less "leading the witness." I like reading the dreams because I like the girls' perspectives on the world and the teachings. Some of those perspectives are fed through a funnel of parental religious sources (all children receive this). However, the way individuals experience and apply those things is unique and fascinating to read about. I believe it would have been better without the parental interpretations.
The authors did an excellent job on this book; the writing was of high literary quality, which is one of the reasons I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Right from the first page, the pace and tempo of the book were steadily built up, and as it progressed, I became so engrossed that I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I enjoy how this essential book was written, including what the girls saw, what scripture says about what they saw, and the girls' interpretation of what they saw and shared with their family. I couldn't understand why Jesus would show a two- and four-year-old what hell was like in such detail. It is a nice book, and I am glad I read it; yet, I gave it a four-star rating due to the author's excessive evangelism and the lack of explanation about Hell mentioned above, which I disliked. On the other hand, I liked how the book was well edited; I did not find any errors. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know a story about heaven and hell.
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Snatched Up to Heaven!
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