Elijah

Reviewed by Regan Zaborowski (age 8) for Reader Views (3/08) "Elijah" is the story of the real man, Elijah, who lived a long time before Jesus was born. He was a prophet; that is a friend of God who God speaks to and tells him what to say to other people. Elijah wants all the people in Israel to believe in God instead of the god Baal that most of the people there worship. The story begins when Elijah goes to see King Ahab to tell him that God wants his people to believe in Him or he will send a drought. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel want to kill Elijah, so he goes away. No rain comes for a long, long time, and that makes the food and water dry up so the people have nothing to eat. Then Elijah meets a lady named Leah and her son Hiram, and she prays to God when Elijah asked God to keep giving her flour and oil so that she could bake bread. God also brings Hiram back to life after he died. At the end of the book, Elijah goes back to see King Ahab to try to make him believe in God. They all go to a mountain and the real God wins a contest to make fire first on some bulls. All the people who prayed to Baal were killed. Then after another long time God makes it rain; and King Ahab finally believes in God. I liked reading this book, "Elijah." The printing was big, and I could mostly read the words by myself. I read this book to my mom, and she liked it too. It was cool because I learned about Elijah and Moses and Abraham and some of the other prophets that told people about God, before in school -- but this book told the whole story of Elijah and the things he did to make people believe in God. I didn't know that he prayed so much about bringing food and water and rain, and that he brought Hiram back to life. It was cool that he could ask God for rain and fire and to make somebody alive again, and God would do it. My favorite part of the book was when everybody was on the mountain and lots of people were on Baal's side, and just a few people were on Elijah's side, and God made lightning come out of the sky and make fire on Elijah's bull. It was sad that all those people on Baal's side got killed because the law said so. This book was also interesting because it was about a real person that actually lived on earth and did those things, not a made up character. It makes me want to read about other prophets like Elijah and find out what kinds of things God helped them do. I'm not sure if there are any prophets still alive today, but I would like to read about them if they exist.