Category: Ages 5–8 (page 2 of 39)

Saint Patrick the Giftgiver

Firstly, wow. Email me, I said. I don’t know what I expected after that last post—a high five gif from a friend maybe, and one or two emails saying, “Yes, we’ve been here this whole time”? I did not expect a swell of emails, all of them thoughtful and kind and so sweetly specific. You gave me glimpses into your lives and let me see how God has used all these good books in them and, honestly, you just kind of blew my mind.

Because this is what this blog looks like from my end: I sit here at our kitchen table at 5:47 a.m. and I write these posts and then they kind of disappear. I mean, I know they’re there—but does anybody else? Your emails told me most emphatically that yes, you know they’re there. I felt like I put a seed in the dirt and went back inside, thinking, Well, I hope that works out, and God just brought me back outside and showed me a dazzling patch of sunflowers. It was moving. You guys: I needed tissues.

Thank you.


And now, enough about me. Let’s talk about Ned.

Ten years ago, I discovered Church History ABCs. I bought it on a whim—no one had recommended it to me; I’d never seen it reviewed. I just happened across it on Amazon and thought, That looks awesome. And while I loved everything about that book—the historical depth, the wordplay, the way it made my daughters belly-laugh—the illustrations were what really stuck with me. They were arrestingly different from the cartoons or soft watercolors I’d encountered in other Christian picture books. There was nothing soft about them: they were all crisp edges, bright colors, clean lines. They were playful and witty and I remember thinking as I studied them, Christian art can look like this? I made note of Ned Bustard then and have devotedly followed his work ever since.*

You may recognize his art from the Every Moment Holy books, or maybe you (lucky you!) have one of his linocuts hanging in your home. Maybe you know him from the Rabbit Room or The O in Hope or you own an album or two with his work on the cover. (If his name is new to you, seek him out. You won’t regret it.) But for me, it all goes back to that book—the one I wanted to share with all my friends so badly that I started a blog to get the word out.

And so it feels fitting to celebrate this blog’s tenth anniversary with Ned Bustard’s newest book, Saint Patrick the Forgiver.

Saint Patrick the Forgiver, by Ned Bustard | Little Book, Big Story

Like Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver, this book introduces readers to the saint behind a holiday and tells that saint’s full story (the facts and the legends, too). This book is short and a lot of fun to read aloud, but don’t let that fool you: it deals in some deep themes. The first half of the book, for example, is a complete story: Patrick is kidnapped by pirates, saved by God, and then restored to his family (huzzah!). God could have stopped there and still given us a satisfying story about how he works out his good plan even on pirate ships or in muddy pastures. But no! The story doesn’t end there, so Bustard’s telling doesn’t either. Patrick says,

And to this day I’d still be home,
but for another vision . . .

This story isn’t simply about God’s provision during difficulty (though that’s certainly in there), but about God’s call upon Patrick to forgive his captors and return to the very place he’d just escaped. So Patrick returns to Ireland and ministers to the people there. But Bustard makes it clear that this is not the product of Patrick’s general awesomeness and budding saintliness—it is the fruit of God’s work in Patrick:

They stole me from my parents!
How could that be forgiven?
The only way I could return
was by the strength of heaven.

Bustard places God at the center of this story, just as he does in Saint Nicholas. Patrick’s faithfulness is wonderful and inspiring, but as he narrates his story, Patrick makes it clear again and again that it was God’s work in him that enabled him to return to Ireland. And so, when we reach the stories of miracles and legends, we know that this was a man acting in obedience to God and serving by God’s strength alone.

Saint Patrick the Forgiver, by Ned Bustard | Little Book, Big Story

And then there are those illustrations: I suspect that there is a whole visual language at work in Bustard’s illustrations—every detail seems to carry some added meaning, from the Celtic knots to the animals to the composition of each page. The art combines with the story to give us a full, exciting picture of Patrick’s life, but I suspect that the illustrations, if you were to dig deeper into them, tell a whole story unto themselves.

In short, Saint Patrick the Forgiver is exactly the sort of book that got me writing book reviews in the first place: one excellent in every aspect, that points readers from a good story to the Greatest Story, and that reminds readers that God is at work always, in every time and place.

______
*Very closely, in fact, as I now work for him through Square Halo Books (huzzah!).


Saint Patrick the Forgiver
Ned Bustard (2023)


Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review it or compensated for my review in any way. I share this book with you because I love it, not because I was paid to do so.

The Lord’s Prayer

I love a good illustrated version of The Lord’s Prayer. We have—and have savored—several. But Harold L. Senkbeil’s The Lord’s Prayer: For All God’s Children does more than put the familiar words to a new tune: it explores those words, digging into what they mean for a child today. Like the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer can (at least in our family’s tradition) become so rhythmic, so familiar, that its edges feel worn off. And that is both a comfort and a challenge, because when it fits so smoothly in the palm like that, we tend to lose a sense of its shape.

The Lord's Prayer, by Harold Senkbeil | Little Book, Big Story

But this new book welcomes readers into the words of the Lord’s Prayer and examines the prayer line by line. Each double spread focuses on one line of the prayer and allows the narrator to explore the meaning behind it. Like The Apostles’ Creed, an earlier book in this series, this book is written in first person, from a child’s perspective, so these old, oft-recited words feel warm and welcoming.

Lord, teach us to pray.
Your will be done on earth as in heaven.
How do we know God’s will?
God’s word reveals his will to us.
Is it dark and scary? No!
It’s good and gracious.
God cares about what happens on earth.
That’s why he sent his Son Jesus for us all.

Like the other books in the FatCat series, this one is full of materials that equip families to dig deeper: prayers to read together, a list of verses that accompany each line of the Lord’s Prayer, information on the benefits of catechism—these books are a wealth of resources! And The Lord’s Prayer is worthy addition, one to savor as a family, a few pages at a time.


The Lord’s Prayer: For All God’s Children
Harold L. Senkbeil; Natasha Kennedy (2022)


Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review it or compensated for my review in any way. I share this book with you because I love it, not because I was paid to do so.

A World of Praise

The last few months at our house have been—how shall I put it?—an adventure. We haven’t been hit by a semi-truck of suffering, just by a series of rogue go-carts, I guess, one of them right after the other. Some seasons are like that, and when you’re in one, you can find yourself grumbling and grousing about every little thing before you realize exactly what’s happened.

And so last night, when I read A World of Praise to the girls, I was struck by how much my soul needed this book’s lifting and expanding. A World of Praise tours the globe, praising the Lord for things big and small, reminding readers of the wonders on other continents as well as in our own back yards. The words are gorgeous, and the illustrations harmonize with them beautifully; they are richly detailed in a way that invites readers to linger, ponder, and pray.

A World of Praise, by Deborah Lock | Little Book, Big Story

Oh, the wonder of a new morning!
Oh, the warmth of the prairie breeze!
Oh, the sway of the ripening wheat!
Oh, the fullness of our daily bread!
Thank you for all that you provide
to fill our daily needs.

The rhythm of this poem and the little windows of the paintings drew us out of our home (“Oh, the wonder of Urgent Care! Oh, the warmth of yet another fevered forehead!”) and set our sights higher: on the “God of far and wide, high and low, great and small.” The God who is with us as we disinfect the sink again, hold still for an ankle x-ray, and collect our last cat’s ashes from the “Pet After-Care Facility.” He is the God who blesses us even in seasons of stray go-carts.

This book makes the world bigger in two ways: by recalling for us how big God is, that he reaches every square inch of this world (and beyond!), and by reminding us how big the world is. Which has the double effect of reminding us how small we are and how safe we are in his hands.

So, this book is a soul-stirring delight—one that is a joy to sit and examine with small readers and a balm to read aloud before bedtime. In the last pages of A World of Praise, the author includes passages from the psalms she used as a foundation for the poem, so at its close the book strikes this beautiful note:

From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
the name of the Lord is to be praised.

Psalm 113:3

Which is to say, in light and darkness, praise his name. In the dead of winter also.

A World of Praise, by Deborah Lock | Little Book, Big Story

Amen.


A World of Praise
Deborah Lock; Helen Cann (2022)

The Enchanted Garden

So in the fall we caught Covid, and the day—the very day—that first test developed a second line, this package arrived. Now, any time a package arrives at our house and it’s nobody’s birthday and it’s not Christmas, the assumption is that the package is books. Ninety-nine percent of the time that assumption is correct, and this time was no exception.

In that package—on this day when fevers were climbing and sore throats were blooming and I was trying to get us the food we needed before I, too, succumbed—was The Enchanted Garden, a sweet, self-published parable from author Erin Greneaux. We began reading it that day over lunch and later, when I sick enough to sound like Tom Waits and wasn’t doing any extra-curricular talking, Sarah took over reading it at bedtime. You know how you can listen to some albums (say, Eight Arms to Hold You by Veruca Salt) and bam! you’re in your best friend’s car that summer between ninth and tenth grade, heading to the lake to swim? This story is like that: I picked it up for this review and I could smell rice pudding and hear Sarah’s voice reading to us while I tried not to fall asleep on the floor.

And the memory of all that is sweet to me.

The Enchanted Garden, by Erin Greneaux | Little Book, Big Story

Still, I hope your experience reading it isn’t colored by sickness—but if you do find yourself in need of a good sick-week read, I don’t think you could do better than The Enchanted Garden. Greneaux’s story follows two sisters who discover a hidden garden and, through their time working alongside the Gardener, learn some beautiful lessons about grace and forgiveness. It’s one of those rare chapter books that is perfect for beginners—heavily illustrated and shorter than average, but still a delight to read.

One of my favorite parts is that, in the back of the book, Greneaux invites readers to join an old-school fan club called The Gold Feather Gardeners. That sounds fun enough on its own, but when you join, which we did, you receive a gold feather necklace with a hand-written note telling girls that they are loved and that the necklace is a reminder to them that they are loved. This is brilliant and heart-warming, and some of my girls have worn their necklaces just about every day since receiving them.

The Enchanted Garden, by Erin Greneaux | Little Book, Big Story

So, for those with girls among you, just ready to graduate to chapter books (or perhaps older than that! We all enjoyed it): consider The Enchanted Garden. Sick day not required.


The Enchanted Garden
Erin Greneaux; Taisiia Kolisnyk (2022)


Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review it or compensated for my review in any way. I share this book with you because I love it, not because I was paid to do so.

Jesus Listens

I suppose every family picks up its own lingo, usually after an adorable toddler misspeaks and her invented word becomes enshrined in the family vernacular. Thus, when something is crooked in our house—a sock, say, or a ponytail—we call it “fonky.” Or when something is of the ordinary, tried-and-true variety, we don’t call it “regular”—we say it’s “reggly.” And so forth. These are the words our daughters will most likely take with them into adulthood, not realizing until they call something “fonky” in public that nobody else’s family says it quite that way.

But it’s funny to think that we’re learning language all the time—not just language, as in The English Language, but all those subtle forms of it. There’s Mom Language, for example, and its various dialects, each particular to the season of motherhood you’re in. These days, I’m pretty fluent in Writing Language, which means that, if you don’t stop me, I could really talk your ear off about the way Stoker employs dramatic irony in Dracula or about Semicolons, The Uses Thereof. When my husband talks Coding with another computer programmer, I definitely need a translator.

Jesus Listens, by Sarah Young | Little Book, Big Story

And there’s no denying it: the church has its own language, too. Sometimes it’s heavy with “thee’s” and “thou’s” or perhaps with talk about the heart—”the Lord put it on my heart,” or “guard your heart,” or “check your heart on that one.” I remember coming into the church at seventeen and putting some serious work into decoding these phrases, which seemed to fly most thickly during prayer time.

Have you noticed that? We seem to slip into our stiffest, most stilted language when we’re praying. Not all of us, all the time, of course. But I sure feel that temptation, and I know I’m not the only one.

Jesus Listens, by Sarah Young | Little Book, Big Story

And that is where Jesus Listens gets it right. This is a devotional for kids, written in first person, that helps guide children into a rich prayer life. In Jesus Listens, Sarah Young somehow strikes a balanced tone: these prayers feel like they’re offered to both to the God of the Universe, who made all things, and to our Heavenly Father, who loves to hear from us right where we are. Neither too casual nor too formal, these prayers are written in the language of childhood—open, honest, and direct. Each one draws heavily from Scripture and closes with a handful of verses for readers to explore.

This book is written as a devotional for kids to use during their own reading, but it also works when read aloud as a family. However you use it, Jesus Listens serves as a beautiful template for prayer. And every time I read one at the lunch table with my daughters I want to sigh happily and say, “That is so good.” I find that it’s teaching me a new language as well, one that encourages me to drop the Official Prayer Language and simply come before God as his child.


Jesus Listens: 365 Prayers for Kids
Sarah Young; Tama Fortner (2022)


Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review it or compensated for my review in any way. I share this book with you because I love it, not because I was paid to do so.