Review of “A Helping Heart” by Blaina Tallent Best

Score: 90/100 (9.0 out of 10)

There are few things more beautiful than to be of service to your fellow man.

Human beings are social animals who evolved in cooperative groups—families, tribes, and teams. Though some of us may prefer it, we really aren't meant to be alone. We are meant to work together and help each other, not just for our survival, but for our happiness and to accomplish bigger and better things!

Another way of looking at it is that God put us on this Earth to be fruitful, commanding us to love and care for one another as a demonstration of his love.

A Helping Heart by Blaina Tallent Best reminds us that love, compassion, caring, and kindness are natural human instincts that we need to acknowledge, practice, and nurture. Some people lose their smile and become very closed off. We become more self-centered, more guarded, and—thus—more secluded. We spend less time with other people and frown at the thought of giving to charity, volunteering, or associating with our neighbors. This is especially true following a traumatic or challenging event (or series of events) such as a divorce, being fired from a job, or experiencing a death in the family. Many of us have been there and done that.

This book is a reminder to smile, laugh, reach out, and be open to helping others. Ultimately, people love and care for people who love and care for them. People want to be around other people who make them happy and comfortable.

That doesn't mean to become a doormat or letting people take advantage of you, but it does mean making yourself emotionally and physically available to help.

And anyone can be a helper.

You can be big, small, short, tall, disabled, male, female, black, white, Asian—it doesn't matter. If you are a human being, you can be there for your fellow person. God gave us sympathy, compassion, and empathy, things which don't seem to make much evolutionary sense in the self-preservation sense, but they're part of why human beings rule this planet: we think together, work together, and—thus—can accomplish more than we can separately.

Two people can rake the leaves or plow the snow out of the driveway faster than one. Eleven average players on a football team can accomplish much more than one star.

This book's message is powerful and beautiful.

If there was anything that we didn't quite jive with, it was the art. The illustrations are ambitiously crafted by the author, Blaina Best, herself! And they definitely aren't bad. However, they aren't our cup of tea either. We were thinking about those who might read and show this to children. The illustrations have a somewhat abstract look and feel. Most notably, the faces of the characters/figures are either non-existent, blank, or unclear.

We think we know what the illustrator was going for. They were probably trying to show that YOU (the reader) could be the person doing the helping.

However, if there's anything in art that could be unsettling or even scary to a young reader, it's a painting of a human being without a face or a baby with black voids for eyes. That's actually a bit terrifying. We're not sure if the illustrator realized that.

However, the message and writing in this book is good enough to warrant a 9/10 rating.

Check it out on Amazon!