When reading a picture book about the creation of the world, one doesn’t expect to make it a third of the way through the book before God actually creates anything. But Quina Aragon’s book Love Made spends the first part pages looking not at what God has made but at who he is. He lacks nothing, but lives in perfect joy; he is three in one.
This language banishes the Far Side image of God at a drafting table, compass in hand, and suggests a God so exuberant, so perpetually filled with delight, that his joy spilled over “into what we call creation.”
Aragon is a spoken word artist as well as an author, and her words leap and soar and spill over the page, with a rhythm as fun to read as it is to listen to. Scotty Reifsnyder (Exploring the Bible) captures that same bright energy in his illustrations, making this book a treat to read to the littlest listeners (but don’t be surprised if bigger ones drift in to listen, too).
I do not know how things look from where you stand right now. But uncertainty is a persistent theme here, as some things tentatively begin to reopen and other things remain indefinitely closed. We do a lot of waiting-to-see: waiting to see what the grocery store looks like this week, or whether swimming lessons will be cancelled this summer, or when we can safely have a grandparent or two over to play.
I suspect that through this, our daughters are getting a lesson in “the many things Mom and Dad don’t know.” In some ways, the ground between us has been leveled—we are no longer the ones who hold the plans and dole them out daily, but we wait with our daughters to see what will happen next. We do our best to wait patiently.
But built into this strange season of waiting-to-see are many gifts—chief among them, the time to process these changes together. We can take long walks together or, heck, even stay up late to talk through hard things. (We have nowhere to be in the next morning.) On days when one child grieves—because everything is different and she doesn’t understand why—I have no tightly-wound schedule to keep me from climbing into bed with her and holding her while she cries.
I know that not every family has that luxury right now. Many of you are working harder than ever (thank you!) or grieving heavier losses than ours (I am so sorry). But I suspect that most of us are looking for ways to lift our children’s eyes toward God during this time of global suffering, and today’s series of books offers a beautiful, very practical way to do that.
One book in particular has been helpful in talking to my younger daughters about loss. Henry Says Good-Bye*, by Edward T. Welch, tells the story of a young hedgehog, grieving the death of his pet ladybug, and the story walks through Henry’s emotions and grief in a way that is honest but also oriented toward the gospel.
That book is a part of the Good News for Little Hearts series, a series overseen by the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF). Written by some well-known Christian counselors like David Powlison or Edward Welch, these books address issues like coveting, anger, fear, or anxiety, and equip parents with tools helpful in deep discussion with young kids.
I have been pleasantly surprised by how well-written these books are. Even as an adult, I’ve felt challenged and convicted, or reassured, by the stories, and I’m grateful for the doorways they have provided into deeper conversations with our kids. At the back of each book, the author includes a parent resource, as well has some perforated cards with scripture that address the book’s topic.
When our circumstances feel so uncertain from day to day, I am grateful for books like these that help remind our family of what never changes: Christ’s sacrifice is still sufficient for us. God’s love for us never changes, and he never leaves us. Those are the stories I want to read to my girls again and again while we wait to see what comes next.
*This book is so beloved at our house that I couldn’t find it anywhere when the time came to photograph it. “Have you seen it?” I asked each daughter in turn. When I got to Phoebe, who at six has keenly felt this year of abrupt transition, she sighed. “No,” she said. “But I love it so much.”
Has it been a while since you had a good cry? Then I have a book for you.
Jonathan Gibson wrote The Moon is Always Round after the stillbirth of his second child. In attempting to explain to his young son why his baby sister wouldn’t be coming home with them after all, and how a good God could allow such a loss, Gibson reached for the image of the moon: even when it is in shadow, it is still round. When it looks like a crescent, or a wedge, or squashed circle, the moon is still round. And just as the moon’s shape never changes, God’s goodness, even when his purposes are obscured, never changes either.
We are living through one of these “new moon” phases, when we have conversations like this one daily with small children. My younger daughters want to know why they can’t go see a friend, or go to school, or play on the playground at a favorite park. The pat “because we don’t want to get our friends or neighbors sick or to get sick ourselves” answer doesn’t satisfy. They want to know why the coronavirus has to happen, when it will be over, and why it had to affect them.
And my best answer is, I don’t know. But God does, and he is always good.
Though we see, at times, only a sliver of God’s light and goodness, or though he seems to be, like a new moon, obscured or absent, God is still here. He is still good. No shadow can change his fullness or goodness.
The Moon is Always Round is a book of beautiful hope and truth, and it is a book we need right now. It reminds us (even the grown-ups, weeping snotty tears and warbling as we try to keep reading aloud) that our God is still faithful even when we don’t understand what he’s up to.
People in our house can find their own pajamas and put them on (some can even do their own laundry!). They can fill their own water bottles and find beloved stuffed animals wedged between a bed frame and a wall. Gone are the days of the last-minute feedings, velcro swaddlers, ninja-style exits from darkened rooms. (Gone, too, are the sweet, sleeping baby noises; the snuggly late-night feedings; the tiny toes . . . )
Only two things still pull our just-tucked-in daughters from their just-warmed-up beds:
a) interpersonal conflict
b) fear
House fires, volcanoes, giant puppets that eat people: our daughters’ marvelous imaginations—the same ones that fuel their stories and games during daylight hours—sometimes take a while to power down before bed. That hour when all is quiet and their thoughts hum darkly along can be rough.
Why Do We Say Goodnight?, a sweet story by Champ Thornton (The Radical Book for Kids) and Rommel Ruiz (Golly’s Folly), addresses just this. “Why do we say goodnight,” the young narrator wonders, “when night isn’t good at all?” Her mother gently and patiently tells her that God made the dark as well as the light, and he is with us in it even when we can see him—our Shepherd and Protector.
These are truths I still tell myself when my own imagination turns toward the Dark Side at three in the morning. They are truths I point to when worried daughters drift into the living room after hours.
And right now, as we live in lockdown, I turn to these truths during the daylight hours: God is our Shepherd and Protector, and when we can’t see, he can. We aren’t always surrounded by a literal darkness right now but by the darkness of waiting, which obscures the road ahead and makes us wonder, How long, O Lord? And so this book is an encouragement to me as I read it to my daughters and pray with the story’s narrator:
Please help me, Lord, to trust in you— for all you are and all you do.
Lord, you made night, and you can see. You’re the Shepherd who cares for me.
We are, like so many of you, firmly entrenched at home. Mitch’s office is the living room couch; the girls and I are back to homeschooling, as schools are closed state-wide until late April. Our church has moved to online services, and we only leave the house to shop for groceries or to take a short—but socially distant—walk to the neighbor’s, to watch their chickens. Even the library is closed.
It is a strange time.
I know that many of you are in the same boat. I found myself wondering what I can do, from here, to help other families who are suddenly at home all the time with kids, and here are a few things that crossed my mind:
1) I love helping you find good books for your kids, and I know that the long days at home may call for great new read-alouds, or chapter books for a school-age reader now passing the time at home. Or books full of art project ideas. Or books with elaborate pictures that will keep little kids busy for a while. You are always welcome to email me (thea@littlebookbigstory.com), and I will do my best to help you find the book (or books!) you’re looking for. (You don’t even really have to know what you want. Just tell me a little about you and your family, and I’ll come up with a short list of ideas for you.)
2) The Little Book, Big Story book list is always available to you! It is organized by genre, and each book is labelled by age, and each title links to the full blog review (and each review contains a link to the book’s Amazon listing), so you should be able to find some new family favorites there. You can access the book list here.
3) If school closures mean that you are unexpectedly homeschooling, I would love to help in any way I can. Please feel free to email me (thea@littlebookbigstory.com). I may not be able to answer your questions myself, but I may be able to help direct you toward someone who can. And a lot of curriculum publishers and online programs are offering free or dirt-cheap resources right now for families like yours. I may be able to connect you with some that suit your family. (Do you know of any good ones? Please share them in the comments below!)
4) Lastly, I’m going to keep sharing good books here. Because we’re in the middle of Lent, I already had some great, gospel-filled books scheduled, and I love that we get to keep reminding each other of the truth even now, when things seem so uncertain. But God is not uncertain. He is steadfast and unchanging, and though we are living through one of scarier chapters of his story now, we know that this story has a happy ending.
And that is what today’s book review is all about.
Jesus is surprising: A God that became a baby? A master that serves his servants? A king that dies for his people? This is the truth at the heart of God’s Very Big Surprise.
In this latest book in the wonderful Tales That Tell the Truth series, Randall Goodgame (of Slugs & Bugs!) uses the parable of the good master to tell the story of Jesus’ ascension and return. He also weaves the gospel into the story. And he gives us a vision for what we can do to serve Jesus while we wait for his return.
This is a small picture book, but it is filled with big and glorious truths. And they are truths our families need to hear again and again right now: God knows the end of our story! None of this comes as a surprise to him! I am so grateful for books like this one, that encourage adults as well as kids.
You can find the rest of the books in the Tales That Tell the Truth series (and I really hope you read them all) right here.
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.
