James and the Sword of the Spirit is an illustrated story about a young boyfacing his fears, two vicious dogs, with the help of his Christian faith.

It is meant for early readers with a full-colour illustration and short text passage on each page. The text may be too small for some children, and onsome pages like loc 29 it is overlaid on the image making it hard to read, however overall the illustrations are high-quality, and the presentation isexcellent.

It is a Christian book, and may be of interest to parents who want books to read with their children that show principles of their faith. Those whoare not may find it less desirable.

The plot involves James confronting two dogs, but before we get there, there is a digression about a scary boy at school. This goes nowhere and Jamesnever gets to school, so we never see what happens. Unless there is a sequel, I can see demands from children that their parents hastily make up whathappened next.

While spell-checked, this book could have done with an editor or proofer. Bone-chilling should be hyphenated and is not. There are also misplacedpunctuation e.g. a question ending in a full stop on loc 26. Also while this is obviously a children’s book, there are some Americanism’s upfront thatmake this a book not to be used with early readers, e.g. “Off of the sidewalk” instead of “off the drive.” and references to a mailbox and “Mom”. Thespelling of Armour without the U could result in failed spelling tests.

Good for American Christian readers to read with their children, but possibly less so for British families and early readers.