You want your kids to read, but the selection of books is overwhelming. What’s a parent to do?

We’re here to help! BreakPoint’s Youth Reads is dedicated to reviews of teen and preteen fiction. Once a week we review a novel that’s written for this age group, to help parents and educators know what’s out there and what’s good!

Until recently, Youth Reads had its own biweekly e-newsletter, but it has now been incorporated into the Colson Center’s weekly Worldview Journal e-newsletter. So if you want to see new reviews from Youth Reads and you’re a WJ subscriber, you don’t have to do anything; just watch for our reviews in that newsletter! But if you were a Youth Reads e-mail subscriber and you want to keep seeing our reviews in your inbox, you’ll need to sign up for Worldview Journal. You can do that by going to the BreakPoint site, clicking on “Sign Up” at the top right, and selecting “Worldview Journal.”

Why fiction? Because the stories we read have a deep and lasting impact on our lives. As Russell Moore put it, “The Bible doesn’t simply address man as a cognitive process but as a complex image-bearer who recognizes truth not only through categorizing syllogisms but through imagination, beauty, wonder, awe. Fiction helps to shape and hone what Russell Kirk called the moral imagination.” A love for stories, and an ability to learn from them, is part of our God-given makeup. That’s reason enough to seek out the good stories from every era and to share them with those we care about.

Our reviews focus mainly on two categories: artistic merit and content. We’ll let you know whether the books we’re reviewing are well-written and whether they have any issues of concern (ethical or moral problems, profanity, sexual descriptions, violence).

But most of the time, we won’t tell you whether or not to let the young reader in your life read a particular book. We believe that parents, who know what their own children are able to handle, are the best ones to make that decision. As Chuck Colson explained, “We’re simply here to provide information and a Christian perspective, and to help you and your kids navigate the brave new world of young adult fiction.”