Serenity 8: Sunday Best Paperback – January 1, 2008

Even pre-teens love this series about Serenity, the bad girl who is befriended by the school prayer group. It's funny and deals with teen issues.

The cover literally had chew marks BUT I paid a penny plus shipping. Sooooo.... It's a good thing she really needed this book and our library doesn't have a copy.

Admittedly, I have not read the entire series - I skipped volumes 2-6 and bought volumes 7-10 when my Christian Book Store was almost giving these away at fifty cents a piece. The Serenity comic series (I will not refer to it as manga from this point on) was not bad - it was just not very good, like a food that is an acquired taste and something more favorable was easily available.In Volume eight, Serenity delves into the Christian character, this time by finally attending a Church service and accompanying the prayer club in cleaning up the local campground after a flood where she has her first supernatural encounter after falling into a river. The second story seems to come the from the imagination of the character Tim Peterson, the director-writer-producer wannabe featured in volume seven, as he presents a disaster drama wherein his friends (the prayer club) play a mixture of family and friends as they come the rescue of two young boys who go exploring in a collapsing mall after a major earthquake and get involved with a gang of thieves opportunistically burglarizing the mall jewelry store. From the Christian standpoint, I suppose the primary Serenity story is alright but Christian parents who intend to shield their sweet little angel from every negative and scary feeling might be put off by the mild violence and danger presented as these two groups confront one another.Outside of Christian circles, it's best you avoid this - this book, this entire series. If you are the kind to collect and read strange and future cult classics like  politically pandering books  and books (supposedly)  written by celebrities , go ahead and collect them all but are looking for something Christian and worthwhile to read check my other reviews. It markets itself as manga but it really not. The binding of my own copy become unglued - the book was printed in Singapore but oddly enough I do not blame the publisher for the disintegration of this series.