This week—the last week of my summer vacation—I get to share my favorite post from elsewhere with you (favorite, because I’m hugely biased and not at all humble).
You see, Deeply Rooted has accepted a handful of my pieces for publication either in the magazine or on the blog, and the first one went up this morning, so while we celebrate the very last day of summer vacation by going all Jackson Pollock on a bedsheet (and the garden, and the yard, and the lawn chairs), you can pop over to Deeply Rooted and read my piece about early mornings, Earl Grey tea, and starting the day with my husband.
There is a spectrum of Bibles available for kids: at one end sits the actual Bible; at the other, the lovely picture books that give a faithful retelling of a single Bible story, many of which have appeared on this blog. In the middle sit the quality story Bibles like The Jesus Story Book Bible or The Gospel Story Bible. (I have banished from the spectrum books that are vacuous and cute, and reduce stories like “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” to a moral tale told in rhymed couplets from the spectrum. I’m a snobby book blogger. I can do that sort of thing.)
Tomie dePaola’s Book of Bible Stories sits just inside the spectrum, spine to spine with the actual Bible. It doesn’t point each story back to Jesus, but trusts that its readers have grown past the need for that and tells the stories in slightly adapted passages from the NIV translation, framed by dePaola’s gorgeous, full-page illustrations.
If your child is ready to move past story Bibles and into the realm of Scripture itself, Tomie dePaola’s Book of Bible Stories serves as a great bridge: though we prefer the ESV for our family readings, the NIV makes a nice introduction to the language of the Bible for kids that find the ESV too ponderous at first. It is also a great reference for tackling specific stories as they come up in conversation. (Not only that, but it is somewhat of a classic, so it’s easy to find secondhand.)
I hope you know by now that I’m not interested in selling things to you. The books on this blog have turned up in libraries and secondhand bookstores, on the shelves of friends and as gifts. They have deepened the flavor of life for our family and so I, of my own volition, have written about them here, not because I was asked to or paid to write about them, but because I wanted to share them with you.
I state this so plainly because today’s post might, otherwise, smell a little fishy. I am a member of the staff at Deeply Rooted, and, as it is not a children’s book (or even an actual book), it is out of keeping with my usual review fare—but not so out of keeping that I couldn’t justify sharing it today. Consider this one a post for you and, therefore, indirectly for the children you may or may not have.
So, I write to you now not as a copy editor, but as a wife and mother who read Deeply Rooted‘s first issue from cover and cover and loved every bit of it. The content is rich; the photography beautiful. It reads less like a magazine and more like a 96-page anthology of carefully curated essays, interviews, recipes and DIY projects, punctuated with gorgeous photographs, as well as hand-lettered and watercolor illustrations. There are no ads, only biblical wisdom on subjects that range from love letters to natural living to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. (For more on the difference between Deeply Rooted and conventional magazines, read here.)
The magazine is released quarterly, so the summer issue just came out last week. My copy arrived on Saturday and since then, I’ve read it through once before turning back to savor certain articles, lingering over them as I do over the best sort of dessert. I can write to you as a reader, yes, but I can also write to you as a copy editor now and tell you that, ladies, this issue is good. I have bonded—really bonded—with a few of those pieces, and the care and attention that goes into every word on those pages is a lovely thing to behold. If you’d rather not curl up with Grudem’s Systematic Theology at nap time, but would like something equally rich yet served in multiple, small courses, then Deeply Rooted is for you.
I’d hazard a guess that anyone who spends time with a child of three or four is familiar with one simple word: “Why?” It is endless in its variations, relentless in its application, and astonishing in its ability to reduce the full-grown human brain to a bowl of quivering mush, capable only of whimpering feebly, “I don’t know! That’s why!”
On good days, I’m quick with my answers, willing to sit at my daughter’s (pick one) level and explore the world of the pill bug/neighbor’s dog/pumpkin vine. On bad days, I . . . well, I wish I could answer as beautifully and quickly as the parents in this book seem to do.
Does God Know How to Tie Shoes? is a series of questions and answers, passed back and forth between a girl named Katrina and her wise, Bible-minded parents. There’s no narrative, only questions (in the voice of spunky, sweet Katrina) and answers (in the voice of her parents, who draw from the Psalms to answer Katrina’s delightfully offbeat—but believable—inquiries about God).
“Mama, does God ever have to clean up His room?”
“He wakes the dawn and makes sure the seasons change. Yes, He keeps everything in order.”
“But even in His closet?”
The illustrations are beautiful, textured and rich, and they show both the wideness of the creation Katrina contemplates with her parents as well as the intimacy of small moments spent together as a family. For an impulse buy at a secondhand bookstore, Does God Know How to Tie Shoes? delivers. And reading it to an inquisitive child serves as a welcome reprieve from those other questions: the ones not about God, but about paper and laundry and cotton balls . . .
When put like that, the Trinity sounds simple. Suspiciously simple. In fact, it sounds almost as though the author is shrinking a profound truth into a cute metaphor, reducing a mystery into a comfortable object that we can hold in our hand. I had my reservations about that, but this book received such consistently glowing reviews on Amazon that I decided to take the plunge and see how, exactly, God is like an apple.
Prepare yourself: this is yet another glowing review of 3 in 1. Of the books we’ve purchased recently, this is one of the best—a crystal clear picture of God and the Gospel that loses nothing in the telling but instead added to my own understanding of the Gospel by explaining the way that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit interact when a person comes to faith in Christ.
This is theology for kids in the best sort of way. Marxhausen doesn’t talk down to kids, though the language she uses is clear and simple. The illustrations are simple as well, but the images the artists use are somehow just right for illustrating the unseen, successfully using color and shape to depict God in a way that doesn’t flirt with breaking commandments.
That said, I want to close on a very clear note: I heartily, heartily recommend 3 in 1. I’m sure you can think up some excuse to go buy it right now, right?
