Book Notes: Heaven is for Real

Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Heaven is for Real is well-organized and flows smoothly. Nearly 4 year old Colton Burpo (the author’s son) took a “3 minute” trip to heaven during an emergency appendectomy. Four months later he began describing what he saw, much to his family’s amazement. The details emerged over the following months and years. There are some striking experiences that even a skeptic like me has a hard time discrediting. Colton met and described relatives he had not met on earth or even heard of. Colton’s father happens to be a preacher so Colton was heavily entrenched in religion. Although much of what Colton described was not what his father had taught him. It makes me wonder how many times this happens to less religious children and if it is cast off as being a dream or the child doesn’t have the vocabulary to illustrate the significance of heaven, Jesus, throne, God, wings, etc..



I couldn’t help but compare this book to, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven by Kevin Malarkey, which I read a few months ago In both books, the families are deeply religious. If you only have time to read one, I recommend Heaven is for Real, the writing is smooth and easy to digest, and it just seemed to flow better than Malarkey’s book. Additionally, somehow the examples in this book are far more compelling. [That said, both books only took me three days to read, so they are not a huge investment!]





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