Although I had never heard of Patricia St. John before adding this book to our Cousin’s Book Club list this year, I have since learned how prolific an author she was. In fact, someone just recently gifted my daughter Treasures of the Snow—but in Chinese! The woman’s stories are everywhere.

It’s great that we discovered her finally, though I fear it’s a bit too late for my kids. While we enjoyed this story well enough, my kids (ages 12 and 14) have aged out from books with 6-9-year-old protagonists, and I sensed their eyes glaze over a bit as I read this one aloud. That doesn’t bode well for the last book on the list this year, Emily’s Runaway Imagination by Beverly Cleary!

The Story

We begin this tale with a boy in Morocco, whose widowed mother has remarried as the second wife of a tyrant of man who treats Hamid and his sisters like dogs. The boy’s mother has been trying desperately to keep the secret of his baby sister’s blindness from the older wife and husband. When little Kinza’s disability is discovered, though, the angry step-father rents her out to a wicked beggar who eventually wants to buy her outright. In desperation, Hamid’s mother sends the young boy and his baby sister off into the night to seek for the white doctor woman in a distant city who will definitely find a way to help.

Hamid runs away with Kinza on his back and eventually leaves Kinza on the doorstep of an English woman serving the city’s urchins as a medical missionary. Heartbroken, Rosemary loves and cares for the blind girl, while also continuing her ministry of feeding and teaching the other poor runaway boys of the alleyways, a group of which Hamid is just another new addition. Eventually Rosemary figures out that Hamid and Kinza are family, and she shows a special love for them both as she teaches them the love of Christ.

The story takes another turn when Rosemary’s English cousin visits Morocco with her husband and young daughter Jenny. Jenny falls in love with Kinza as well, but it’s clear through her own spoiled selfishness that she’s not yet given her life to Christ. When Kinza’s stepfather re-enters the picture, all participants get involved in the dispute over her safety, and almost everyone also learns some important life and spiritual lessons along the way.

A Story That Teaches

While this story includes a great deal of Gospel talk, I felt it was well couched in the story of a missionary teaching children. It was preachy, but in a fitting way.

My favorite teaching point was Rosemary’s description to Jenny of what life is like with Jesus and without Him. She compares it to a lantern, which might be golden and beautiful on the outside but is quite useless without a flame. She explains it further this way, that doing good works without Jesus in one’s heart is “just like taking an empty lantern out in the dark.”

“Well, how do you know if He is there or not?” asked Jenny.

“How does the light get into an empty lantern?” asked Rosemary. “It’s a matter of opening a door and placing a candle inside. Jesus is the Light, and He wants to come in. If the glass of the lantern is clean, the light shines out clearly, but if the glass is cloudy and dirty the light will be very dim. If we really want Him to, Jesus will make us clean and new inside, like clear glass, by helping us to stop being bad-tempered and impatient and disobedient. Then the light of Jesus’ love will shine through, and people will be attracted to Him. He is the important part, not the lantern.” (103-104)

I also loved the directness with which Aunt Rosemary dealt with Jenny’s spoiled selfishness. After pouting in bed all day and making her parents miserable, Jenny receives a visit from Aunt Rosemary and expects some pampering. She gets way more than she bargained for, though, as this passage attests:

”You think nothing matters in the world except your own happiness. Your heart is like a little closed-in circle with yourself in the middle, and every time something happens that hurts or annoys you, you think the world is coming to an end. As you get older, Jenny, you’ll find that there are more and more things that will annoy and hurt you, and you are going to grow into a very unhappy, unloving person. You see, you haven’t really time or room to love anyone else properly because you are too busy loving yourself.” (127)

Conclusion

My kids stayed relatively interested in this story throughout (I read it in two sittings while we burned away some time in hotels last week). I asked for my son’s opinion, but boy was he in a mood! I don’t think I’ll be getting much from this 14yo for the next few years!

Our reading of this story followed closely on the tails of The Mysterious Benedict Society, which was far more involved and exciting. While it might not be fair to compare the two books, I think this comparison is the main reason my kids would rate it low on their list of favorites—that and the younger ages of the kids in the story.

Overall though, I feel like it’s a great example of mid-century Christian literature. It reminds me of a Lamplighter-style book. I don’t think you’d go wrong by filling your elementary or middle-school library with books by Patricia St. John.

©2025 E.T.