Tag: Preschool (page 6 of 30)

The Big, Wide Welcome, by Trillia Newbell | Little Book, Big Story

March 11, 2022 / 0 Comments

The Big Wide Welcome | Trillia Newbell

If you’ve ever spent time on a playground, you know “Can I play, too?” is a loaded question. Some days, it’s met with warmth and welcome—and other days with, “Nope! There’s no room in our game.” My daughter came home from school a few weeks ago, feeling the sting of a game that’s “only for three people” when she wanted to make a fourth. What could I tell her? That her friends will outgrow it and all this will get better on its own? Or could she take comfort in the fact that she’s never ever done this to a friend (or a sister)?

No, of course not. She knows I know she can’t. Just as I can’t pretend I’m not guilty of picking and choosing who I greet at church, or even which clerk’s line I join at checkout. Favoritism doesn’t disappear when we graduate second grade; adults aren’t immune to practicing it. We continue to be drawn to people who are like us and who we think will make friendship or social interactions smooth and easy.

And so I’m grateful that, in this newest volume of Tales That Tell the Truth, Trillia Newbell takes a look at favoritism. What is it? What does Scripture have to say about it? Through the story James tells in James 2, she studies what it looked like then, in the church James was writing to, and today—in our own churches, on the playground, and in the classroom. And she shows us, best of all, that Jesus is a king who welcomes us in—a king who doesn’t play favorites. To the question, “Can I come in?” he responds with a glorious yes.

This post is part of my “Hooray! We’re launching a book!” blog series, celebrating the upcoming release of Wild Things & Castles in the Sky—a book I both contributed to and, alongside Leslie & Carey Bustard, helped edit. Today’s post features an author whose books are warmly recommended in Wild Things.

The Big Wide Welcome: A True Story About Jesus, James, and a Church That Learned to Love All Sorts of People
Trillia Newbell; Catalina Echeverri (2021)

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.

February 25, 2022 / 0 Comments

Chirri and Chirra, The Rainy Day

When you live with little girls (and, I presume, little boys—though I wouldn’t know and could not verify this fact), the veil between the real and imagined world is thin. The other day my five-year-old turned a pilfered paper bag into robot helmet and walked around the house, beep-booping pleasantly and intoning to herself, “I – am – a – ro – bot.”

Later that day, my eight-year-old converted her car seat into a helicopter cockpit, and I could hear her back there calling “Turn left! Turn left!” and pulling the arm rest up like a lever as she leaned hard into the turn.

They are always seeing something just beyond what I can see, something I’ve forgotten—since my own days as a little girl—how to see. And I’ve watched with mixed feelings as my older girls have begun to grow out of this. That doorway doesn’t remain open to them forever.

But books like Chirri and Chirra remind those of us who have crossed that threshold what it’s like on the other side, even as they give younger readers fuel for their imagination. Chirri and Chirra are two sisters who ride their bikes to simple destinations that somehow transform into magical ones. A trip to the sea becomes a trip under the sea; a trip the basement becomes a trip to an enchanting underground land. In this book, a ride in the rain leads Chirri and Chirra to the Rainy Day Cafe, a cozy place designed for watching the rain fall.

Written and illustrated by Kaya Doi, these books are brilliant little windows into childlike play. With their lilting language and soft illustrations, the books themselves seem magical—there’s something in them that inspires new adventures amid the most ordinary settings.

This post is part of my “Hooray! We’re launching a book!” blog series, celebrating the upcoming release of Wild Things & Castles in the Sky—a book I both contributed to and, alongside Leslie & Carey Bustard, helped edit. Today’s post features a book that is part of a series described bewitchingly in Wild Things.

Chirri and Chirra: The Rainy Day
Kaya Doi; trans. from Japanese by David Boyd (2021)

The Good King's Feast, by Elizabeth Harwell | Little Book, Big Story

February 11, 2022 / 0 Comments

The King’s Feast

“We’re meeting in the office after the service, right?” This from an elder who caught up with me before church.

Ah! Were we? I had lost the thread of an email exchange between our family and our church leadership, and—I’m not proud of it—completely forgotten that today was the day our youngest daughter had her “coming to table” interview.

I don’t know how your church handles this, but at our church, the elders meet with each child when they’re ready to take communion and, over a dish of peanut M&Ms, ask them a few questions about communion: do they know what communion is, who Jesus is, and so on. Our oldest daughters did this all together when we joined our church a few years ago, but Josie had been too little then and has spent the years since being patiently prayed over each Sunday by a pastor as we all filed forth in line to receive communion. But now she was five: she understood things. This was her moment! And I had completely forgotten about it.

“She remembers what communion is, right?” I whispered to Mitch during the call to worship. He gave me an “I think so?” shrug. We’d talked to her about it—weeks ago. Surely she’d remember . . . right?

Because the truth is, this is a strange ritual we engage in each Sunday: we eat bread and drink a thimbleful of wine (or grape juice) and look peaceful and meditative about it, as though eating the flesh and drinking the blood of God was not gruesome at all, but glorious. I found myself wondering—does this make sense to a child?

But in The Good King’s Feast, Elizabeth Harwell explains it beautifully, in a way that translates one of the mysteries of our faith into words and images that make sense to young readers. She addresses communion from a child’s height, narrating in the voice of a storyteller meeting a child at the very start of the story. Beginning with the Passover, she works her way through different Old Testament markers that help make sense of both the significance and the symbolism of communion. She does this gradually, patiently, until that first glimpse of the familiar bread and wine feels refreshing, each link of the chain joining with a satisfying click.

Though we didn’t have this book the week of Josie’s interview, I was so grateful when I found The Good King’s Feast a few months later and we were able to continue our conversation about communion at home. I was grateful, too, that she calmly munched her way through her interview, one M&M at a time. The next week she received her own bit of bread, plucked her own thimbleful of grape juice from the tray, and joined us in the mystery as part of Christ’s family.

This post is part of my “Hooray! We’re launching a book!” blog series, celebrating the upcoming release of Wild Things & Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children—a book I both contributed to and, alongside Leslie and Carey Bustard, helped edit. Today’s post features an author who also contributed a chapter to Wild Things.

The Good King’s Feast
Elizabeth Harwell; Laura Pennebaker (2021)

For the pedobaptists among us, Elizabeth Harwell’s other book, The Good Shepherd’s Pasture, is also a delightful resource!

November 26, 2021 / 0 Comments

Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver

To Santa, or not to Santa—that was the question. We were new parents raised with Santa-rich holidays, and that first Christmas with our first baby, that decision sat before us, ours to make. But how? The Christian literature on the subject was plentiful and opinionated: those for Santa argued against Christmases devoid of magic and wonder; those against claimed that inviting Santa to the party was akin to lying to our child. And so we sat in the middle, pondering (between diaper changes) how this momentous decision would affect our daughter into adulthood and whether she would, one day, discuss it with a therapist.

I overthought it, of course. It wouldn’t be a Rosenburg decision if I hadn’t.

It seemed to us that there must be a third option. Beneath the commercial Santa of our youths there was a saint of legend—a man imbued with the ability to defy time and space and celebrated long before Black Friday was a thing. Beneath the legend, there was a historical man—but who was he? After lots of research and conversations with friends, we landed on “not to Santa”—but to Saint Nicholas!

And so on December 6, Saint Nicholas Day, the shoes in our house mysteriously fill with chocolate coins, and we curl up before breakfast with a book about Saint Nick. Right there at the start of Advent, we discuss who Nicholas was and what’s up with Santa. Then we spend the rest of Advent talking about Jesus.

Ned Bustard’s new release, Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver, captures that whole spectrum of Nicholas’s story, from faithful Christian bishop to man of myth and legend. In this sweet rhymed book, Bustard—illustrator of Church History ABCs and Every Moment Holy—shares Santa’s origin story with the youngest readers and shows how the historical man became “Good Saint Nick.” This is a both/and book: we can tell our children the story of Saint Nicholas and we can celebrate Christmas in a way that holds Jesus at the center. Bustard’s linocut illustrations make this book feel both historical and magical. In his “Note From the Author,” Bustard writes:

“Both history and legend portray for us a man moved to action by his faith. The apostle John wrote that we love because God—the greatest Giftgiver—first loved us. And it was God’s generous love that filled Nicholas with gratitude, prompting him to respond with love and generosity to others.”

This is the heart of Nicholas’s story—not the presents, the traditions, or the stockings, but his faithful obedience to the true giftgiver. Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver gets this just right.

Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver
Ned Bustard (2021)

October 22, 2021 / 0 Comments

Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer

Teaching kids to pray can be tricky. When we talk to other people, we take in all kinds of cues, from their posture to their facial expression to what they do with their hands. They interact with us as we speak, even if they respond only with a distracted “Mmm-hmm.” But the act of prayer itself requires some degree of faith that the person you’re talking to—that you cannot see or hear (at least not in the way we’re used to)—is listening and will respond. Though they are experts at imagining the unseen, I know my daughters find this difficult sometimes; sometimes I do, too. Recently, my seven-year-old lamented, “I wish God had a body so we could see him.”

Ah, I told her. But he does! And one day we’ll see it— “No,” she said. “I mean, right now.”

And so I appreciate Laura Wifler’s book Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer and the way she translates the subject from prayer from an abstract concept to a concrete one. She gives young readers (and their parents) language to discuss this central part of the Christian life, and she does so without diluting it. She trusts that her readers can understand this idea, no matter how big it is, and she offers lots of specific examples that help children (and parents) visualize the role of prayer in the Christian life.

Catalina Echeverri’s illustrations use examples from church history and modern kid life to remind readers that prayer is for all of us, all the time—no matter how long ago we lived or how tall we are. And that whatever the size of our requests, God is eager to hear them and to hear from us. We may not be able to sit across from God and watch him respond as we pray, but Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer reminds us that he is listening. And that he will respond.

Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer: A True Story of How You Can Talk With God
Laura Wifler; Catalina Echeverri (2021)

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.

Tag: Preschool (page 6 of 30)

The Big Wide Welcome | Trillia Newbell

Chirri and Chirra, The Rainy Day

The King’s Feast

Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver

Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer

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