Here is another book review from one of my children. This time, it’s from one of my older ones (sort of! She’s number 4 in the line up!). Fascinating book for your kids to read, for sure! Check out what she has to say about it:
Ink on His Fingers is about a man named Johann Gutenberg and a boy named Hans Dunne. Johann is working on printing the very first Bible with type and Hans is planning to become a scribe and copying the Bible by hand, but he ends up in Johann’s shop as an apprentice. Hans eventually finds himself in the middle of a type stealing crime. Herr Fust, the village banker, wants to type the Bible himself and get the credit for it. So he tries every possible way to steal Johann Gutenberg’s type. Johann is also deeply in debt and has pretty much borrowed money from everyone in town. Johann is sure that he will be able to finish printing the Bible and pay everyone back, but he is running out of time.
I really liked this book because it gave me a good idea about how the printing press works and it was also interesting to find out about how hard life was back in the middle of the 15th century and to read about the struggles they went through. It was also cool to read about how Johann Gutenberg’s faith was so strong and he never gave up on trying to finish printing the Bible and sharing it with everyone. He always said that he only wanted to print the Bible so that others can learn from it since the only other Bible’s were handwritten and locked up in the church. He was always thinking of others and putting God above himself and I thought that was a great message. I liked reading about the story of how the first Bible was printed and I thought it was an excellent book over all.