Preschool Archives | Page 10 of 30 | Little Book, Big Story

March 6, 2020 / 0 Comments

Little Seed: A Life

This weekend the rain stopped for two full days and the sun shone down on us and we rejoiced. All day Saturday, Mitch and I shoveled compost, and in the evening we took ibuprofen and warm baths. Sunday, again, I went back to work with my sidekicks, and I sowed flower seeds while they waged lightsaber battles among the garden beds.

February puts a spell on us: a dreary, it-will-be-like-this-forever spell. But the first sunny weekend, when the weather is warm enough to play outside without a parka, puts an end to that. No, we realize, the gray won’t last forever! Blue sky is still up there, above the clouds. The sun won’t always filter through them but will, one day, shine directly upon us.

And so, to celebrate that glimpse of the sky above the gray clouds, I want to share with you a springy book—one we’ve had for so long and that I love so much it shocked me to learn I hadn’t shared it with you yet.

Little Seed: A Life is a board book, following the life of one little seed. Gardening metaphors are some of the best I’ve found for the Christian life, and Callie Grant takes this one and tucks some profound truths into a beautiful, simple story.

The book follows Little Seed as it is plucked up and carried and dropped and buried and seems to lie still for a time. But, Grant reminds us, God gave the seed everything it needed to endure the winter and prepare for spring. Reading this story with a preschooler is great fun, because they’re two steps ahead of you: I know what’s happening! It’s growing! The mystery to them is: What kind of seed is it? What kind of plant will it become?

But as an adult, there’s much to savor, too, and that makes this the best sort of children’s story. The seed goes through death to bring life to others; even in the bleakest place, God still provides for it; the seed’s faithful growth sends out a flurry of new seeds. These are the things I love thinking about as I tuck echinachea and valerian seeds into the soil: death, for the Christian, yields life. And our long wait, beneath a closed gray sky, will one day end. The birds remember, and they sing about it. The bulbs know, and they herald spring’s coming.

During Lent, we, too, remember and wait for the Light to pierce those clouds. Little seeds, he is coming!

Little Seed: A Life
Callie Grant; Suzanne Etienne (2014)

January 31, 2020 / 0 Comments

Sing a Song of Seasons

Sometimes the way to a good book lies through a bad book—in this case, a picture book I chose for my daughter, beautifully illustrated and filled with poems that compared baby frogs to aborted childhood dreams and April showers to weeping.

Nope.

That was not the book we were looking for.

But I still wanted to give my daughter (new to reading and smitten with poetry) a beautifully illustrated book of nature poems. So I resumed the hunt and successfully brought down Sing a Song of Seasons.

There’s a poem for every day in the year in here, gathered from old favorite poets and new favorite poets, and charmingly illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon. These are the poems I thought I’d given my daughter with the first book: delightful, filled with wonder, in no way gloomy or bitter.

From Robert Frost to Walter de la Mare, from Christina Rosetti to John Foster, this is a collection that will grow with my daughter, one that will be a lifeline from adulthood back to the childlike joy of finding a bird’s nest or spotting the first daffodil or watching spiders spin. One of my favorite parts of the day is when she appears at my elbow with this giant book and asks brightly, “Mom, can we read our poem for today?”

Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each day of the Year
Fiona Waters; Frann Preston-Gannon (2018)

November 8, 2019 / 0 Comments

Last Stop on Market Street

Not only has this book been in the world for a while, winning awards and such, but it has also been on our shelves for a while. And I’m sure I had read it to someone before; I know I had read it to myself. But recently, Phoebe and I snuggled on the couch with this book spread across both our knees, and the pinball struck home: the story sunk in, and I came back to it after the girls were in bed, to read it again on my own.

Last Stop on Market Street, if you haven’t read it yet (though you probably have), follows a young boy and his grandmother as they ride the bus through their town. We see them leave church in the beginning of the book, but until the last pages, we don’t know where they’re going. The boy grumbles the way we all often do: Why do they have to ride the bus? Other people have cars. Why doesn’t he have a phone? Those big kids do.

But the way his grandmother answers his questions unhooks his eyes from fleeting pleasures and fixes them on the pleasures before him: You don’t need little music threaded through earbuds—you’ve got live music right here. Your poor friends in their cars—they miss meeting all the people here on the bus. They’re poorer for it.

There are lots of books out there about gratitude, but this one shows us what it looks like. I want to have eyes, like the grandmother’s, that see gifts in the most unlikely things. I want to remember that I am owed nothing, but have been given much.

When we learn where the boy and his grandmother are headed, it makes sense. For a woman who sees the world the way this one does, her gratitude must overflow into kindness.

Last Stop on Market Street
Matt de la Pena; Christian Robinson (2015)

November 1, 2019 / 0 Comments

God Gave Us Sleep

A note to three-year-olds everywhere: if your parents buy you this book for your birthday, they are almost certainly hinting that it is time to start sleeping through the night. (We were when we bought this for Josie.)

Lisa Tawn Bergren’s God Gave Us series is lovely and I’ve reviewed a few of them here. But none have garnered as dedicated a following in our home as this one: for a time God Gave Us Sleep was Josie’s favorite pre-nap read. She flipped through it after I put her to bed, and I often found it on the floor beside her when she woke up, as though it had slipped out of her hands when she drifted off.

And it is a book worth reading and re-reading. Bergren explores sleep and why it matters; through the story, she shows what happens and how we feel when we don’t sleep well, and she reminds readers that sleep is not a punishment or an inconvenience but a gift from our loving God. Exhausted parents know this. Three-year-olds don’t always, so I’m thankful for a book that gently explains it.

Josie has finally started sleeping through the night, though she will sometimes come quietly into our room and wait for us to wake up and take her to the bathroom. She never tells us she’s there, but lets us become gradually aware of her presence by singing “Happy Birthday” softly to herself. That’s so much better than how she used to wake us that we don’t even mind.

God Gave Us Sleep
Lisa Tawn Bergren; Laura J. Bryant (2015)

October 25, 2019 / 0 Comments

Little Me, Big God (Series)

I am well into eleven years of reading board books and can tell you that the few we still read—the ones that have been repurchased when their covers, loosened by soggy gums, finally fell off—are all by Sandra Boynton. Our daughters can still chant the full text of Moo Ba La La. I once recited—with friends at a dinner party—But Not the Hippopotamus from memory, as a spoken word poem, possibly read by William Shatner.

I tell you this not because I’m reviewing a Boynton book today, but because I want you to remember, before we begin, how hard it is for an author to win over both toddler and parent at once.

And then I want to tell you that Steph Williams gets it right. Her Little Me, Big God books are ones I happily re-read any time Josie slings one into my lap. And she slings them into my lap often.

The Man Who Would Not Be Quiet, by Steph Williams | Little Book, Big Story

Each one tells a story about Jesus in a few short pages, and tells it in a way that neither condescends to the young reader or soars over their head. Williams researched the stories thoroughly and tells them simply. She also includes the stories’ full text in the back of each book.

The Best Thing To Do tells the story of Martha and Mary; Never Too Little tells of the children coming to Jesus; The Man Who Would Not Be Quiet tells the story of Bartimaeus. All of them are short and small and deep, as they point both toddler and parent toward the One they need most.

Little Me, Big God Series
Steph Williams (2019)

Disclosure: I did receive copies of these books 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.

Tag: Preschool (page 10 of 30)

Little Seed: A Life

Sing a Song of Seasons

Last Stop on Market Street

God Gave Us Sleep

Little Me, Big God (Series)

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