When a young girl is picked to play Mary in her class’s Christmas play, she believes her big break has come! She is the star of the show. But as she tries to act out her iconic, Christmas-pageant scenes, things seem to go wrong: there’s a boat on stage. One shepherd carries a mop! And who cast a lion in the nativity play?
But she is only one of the book’s two narrators. The other is Sam, a classmate who explains, as the show goes on, that each of these unlikely additions has something to say about the true star of the Christmas story (hint: it’s not Mary).
There’s a Lion in my Nativity is a delightful Christmas book for young readers. It rhymes, it’s funny, there’s a bit of that chaos that always makes my daughters laugh—and yet it points toward a deeper truth, one that we need to hear around Christmas, sure, but also throughout the rest of the year. We are not the star of the show—Jesus is. Sometimes it takes a lion in a manger to help us see that.
Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review this book 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.
Our six year old is learning to read. I’ve watched this process and helped it along twice before, but each time it strikes me like magic, watching as the letters become blends, then words, then sentences, then whole stories! My daughter knows just enough now to pick words out of the pages of picture books and announce proudly, “Mom! That says planting seeds.“
And for this season, I find that some of the best books to tuck into bed with her are the little ones like Beatrix Potter’s or Elsa Beskow’s—the ones that say with their very size and weight, “I am made just for you.” They look too small in my hands, but just right in hers.
Among her many favorites are the Tales of Buttercup Grove books. These books are warm and cozy, small and sweet, with a few words, some woodland animals, and wide, white margins. Wendy Dunham has written a collection of four short books, one for each season (though we only own two). These books each carry a message about God and the Christian life, but rather than feeling preachy or awkward, that message reads like a part of the story, like something that grew from the story naturally.
These are the books Phoebe tucks into her bag to look through in church, and that I find hidden in her bedsheets at night. She cannot read them all to herself yet, but she can show me which page says planting seeds, and that’s a great place to start.
The other night as we finished reading about Ananias and Sapphira in For Such a Time as This, one of our daughters sighed happily. “I love when they tell stories I’ve never heard before,” she said.
And I know what she means. The Bible is full of so many stories—some of them whole worlds tucked into two or three verses—that I often come across passages and feel certain I’ve never read them before. “How does that happen?” my husband wondered the other day as he read the story of King Joash for what felt like the first time. “It’s like I’ve never read this story at all.”
Maybe we’re just indifferent readers, or maybe it’s a curious work of the Spirit, to mute certain stories for us until just the right time, and then bring them blazing forth in full choral glory. Scripture being what it is, with the properties it has, I think it’s the last one.
And so, I have a certain fondness for children’s books that veer off the beaten Noah/Daniel/David path and tell stories like this one, the story of Paul and Silas in prison. This story is striking and powerful, but because Scripture is filled with striking and powerful stories, it is sometimes easy to overlook this one, short as it is.
Bob Hartman draws readers into it through sound—the sound of singing, of an earthquake, of the jailer drawing his sword—which makes this book fun to read aloud but also invites young readers into the scene. Hartman doesn’t just tell the story but creates an experience around it, vivid and animate and accessible, and filled with memorable characters.
Like all the Tales That Tell the Truth books, this one is illustrated by Catalina Echeverri, who continues to be one of my favorite illustrators. The way she captures the energy and expression of the figures, the way she uses symbols to show complex things (like the sounds of singing, or an earthquake, or a soldier drawing his sword) makes even a Philippian jail hospitable for young readers.
These books continue to be among my favorite picture books for our family, and, as always, I’m eager to see which story they plan to tell next.
Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review this book 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.
My seventh grade teacher collected ugly ties. On the first day of class—my very first day of junior high—he thumped a stubborn projector hard on one side. The light switched on, but the glass across the top spider-webbed with fissures.
“Well,” he said. “The library’s not going to be happy with me.“
That was the year I learned about the Holocaust. We probably read books about it; I’m sure we held discussions or listened to lectures, or something. But what I remember most—what I remember vividly to this day—was watching the film Escape From Sobibor. That was my introduction to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the murder of babies, those images of discarded, emaciated bodies.
Was I ready for it? No. Emphatically not. But as upsetting as that movie was, I can appreciate now what my teacher was doing. He knew, I think, that we didn’t need to hear about it—we needed to see it. We needed to move the Holocaust away from the white board and into our imaginations, horrifying as that process was.
John Hendrix’s biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes a similar leap from the theoretical to the visual. In The Faithful Spy, he doesn’t simply tell us about Bonhoeffer but, through his striking illustrations and hand-lettered text, he shows us Bonhoeffer’s life during the rise of the Third Reich. Bonhoeffer is a complex figure—a Christian who risked his life for others, but who also worked as a spy for a German resistance group and was eventually martyred for his role in a plot to kill Hitler.
But The Faithful Spy also tells the story of the German Resistance. In his introduction, Hendrix writes:
“Desperate for leadership, the German people were led like rats to the edge of the cliff by a diabolical Pied Piper. But not all fell for the seduction. Dietrich was but one man among many hundreds of patriotic Germans (including prominent preachers, military generals, and politicians) who saw the Nazis for what they truly were and fought back. They fought with words at first, but eventually they fought with actions.”
Through the story of Bonhoeffer, Hendrix introduces us to a greater story of the faithful Germans who recognized the dangers of “the Nazi war machine” and, in far too many cases, gave their lives to fight it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is perhaps the best-known of them all, but I appreciated Hendrix’s reminder that Bonhoeffer was part of a network, part of a full-fledged resistance.
Though far less disturbing than Escape From Sobibor, John Hendrix’s The Faithful Spy uses words and images to move a story of the war from the whiteboard to the imagination. Through Hendrix’s art and storytelling, Bonhoeffer’s story takes on an unforgettable dimension, and we see him not as a black-and-white photograph surrounded by text, but as a living man with doubts and fears and faith in a God who slays giants.
Does John Hendrix’s name sound familiar? It should! He also wrote and illustrated one of my all-time favorite picture books, Miracle Man, as well as many other excellent books.
When Libby’s Aunt Nora anoints her “Deputy Librarian,” Libby is all about it. She takes the letter of the law seriously, and outlaws most of the kids in the children’s room for one offense or another. But when she finds herself Deputy Librarian of a ghost town, Libby realizes that maybe, in holding so fast to the letter of the law, she has missed the spirit of it completely.
Library’s Most Wanted is a sweet story that allows us to see Libby’s shift from strict, black-and-white thinking to a subtler, more forgiving viewpoint. But it isn’t preachy: it is, first and foremost, a really fun story. And that is what connected with my kids most—that story is the reason I find this book tucked into bed with the little girls and in the hands of the big girls when they curl up to read in the our window seat.
Carolyn Leiloglou (Noah Green: Junior Zookeeper) tells a story that is fun to read and fun to talk about and that might inspire one, later, to play “deputy librarian” in the backyard.
Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review this book 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.
