A Father-Daughter Review: Growing in Godliness

When I was given the opportunity to get a review copy of Growing in Godliness: A Teen Girl's Guide to Maturing in Christ, I almost passed, being a 40-something male. But I do have teen girls, so I asked if they would want to read and review a book with me. One agreed.

This is a short book aimed at teaching girls to "prioritize [their] Christian growth." "Prioritize" is an important word. These things don't just happen. Spiritual growth takes effort in everyone, but teenagers aren't given to prioritizing such long-term things. If they wait 20 years to focus on that, they will eventually look back at those 20 years as wasted years, but it's hard to see that at 16. So I love what the author's trying to do here.

I also loved how she began this project, by looking at our creation in the image of God as both our original state and our goal. I think that's a very healthy place to begin a conversation about sanctification. After that she talked about our purpose, trusting God, learning to accept limits, trust the Bible, love the Church, and pray, and evaluating your results.

As a dad, I felt like this book covered the right ground.

I did have one concern. Though this book is marketed to "teenage" girls, from the first page I got the feeling it was written to 13-year-olds. Is that a problem? Well, maybe.

Now for the 16yo girl's thoughts:

I asked her what she thought of the book overall. "I hate it." Wow. That's kind of strong. She didn't back down.

Her primary complaint was that she felt like it was meant for children, not teenagers. (I guess it was a problem.) She thought the writing style was essentially talking down to her. ("It talks to you like you're a baby.") And she says teens want more direct speech and fewer anecdotes.

Her second complaint was that the author didn't explain the things she should have explained. For instance, the author says you need to connect everything to God, but she doesn't explain why. The book would do better, she says, if some of those anecdotes were replaced by a more scriptural explanation or argument.

Much of the rest, she says, was common sense, things that you would know if you grew up in church.

She did enjoy the chapter on prayer, saying that the author exposed her to new ideas on how to pray.

I asked her how many "stars" she'd give it. She said if it were marketed to pre-teens, she'd give it 3-4 stars. For teens, though, 1 star.

Yikes. I was totally thinking this was a four-star book. Kids are brutal.

I still think the content is basically good, even if it could be fleshed out a bit in places. But this apparently is a book for 11-13yo girls, not "teens." If you do give it to your daughter, plan on talking to them about it; there are places you may need to reinforce.

I can't give it one star, though. This is a good book that was just aimed at the wrong audience; I'll give it three stars.



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