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Seek and Find: The First Christmas, by Sarah Parker | Little Book, Big Story

December 16, 2022 / 0 Comments

Seek & Find: The First Christmas

I am about to reveal one of my top-tier parenting secrets. Are you ready?

I never leave home without a deck of cards and a tiny tin of thinking putty. (And at least six different kinds of lip balm, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Many mid-sermon fidgets have been averted by that tin of putty, and many a restaurant tantrum has been defused by an impromptu game of War. For a full decade, we had either a baby or a toddler (occasionally both at once), so I became adept at keeping small hands busy whenever we encountered a lull.

For car rides or waiting rooms, here is my other secret: seek-and-find books. I Spy, Where’s Waldo, Things to Spot books—these are crisis-averters, road-trip-savers, Makers of Happy Hands and Calm Hearts. Though my daughters can manage most car rides without diversions these days, I still like to keep a few of these around, just in case.

So, how wonderful to discover a seek-and-find book for Christmas!

Each spread in Sarah Parker’s The First Christmas features a short, paraphrased passage from the Christmas story, accompanied by brilliant illustrations filled with things to find. From hanging baskets to the charming Ruth Wren, there are treasures tucked into these pages that draw our attention into the story and invite us to pause and reflect on what’s happening.

This book moves at a different speed than the typical picture book does: “Here is the story,” it says. “Let’s sit and study it together for a while.” I think that’s part of why these treasure-trove books keep appealing to my kids even after they outgrow other books meant for young readers. Seek and Find: The First Christmas invites them to pause and consider; to stop fidgeting for a moment, to settle. To meditate again on the humility of Christ, the God born as a baby.

Seek and Find: The First Christmas
Sarah Parker; Andre Parker (2022)

Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this 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.

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)

April 12, 2019 / 0 Comments

Holy Week

Here is what I know about three. Two gets all the bad press, being terrible, but in our house, three has always been the hardest and sweetest year. At two, our daughters spotted boundaries and pushed against them. They used “No” to great effect. But at three, their bones seem to liquify and they drop to the floor and they cry and cry and cry. Maybe they’re cold. Or hungry. Or sad. Or in a blind rage.

We don’t know; we can only guess.

Meanwhile, they weep. One of our older girls used to have what we darkly called “the 11:00 meltdown.” Months later, we learned that after a morning spent running around barefoot, she was cold, and if we wrestled her into tights first thing in the morning—socks she can’t take off!—the meltdowns stopped. But every daughter has her different drama at three, and it’s Josie’s turn now.

So, given that emotions are a big part of our family’s life right now, an Easter-themed “emotions primer” seems like just the ticket. Danielle Hitchen, author of the already-beloved First Bible Basics and Psalms of Praise, takes readers through the events of Holy Week, but in an unusual way: she uses emotions as a scaffolding for the story, then rounds them out with passages from Scripture.

(Side note: I love that she specifies which translation she used for each quote.)

Jessica Blanchard’s illustrations use color and texture and expression to capture each emotion, making this a book whose approach, though unexpected, works.

In the beginning of this post, I said that three is “the hardest and sweetest” year. But we’ve only talked about the hard part. The sweetness is what happens the rest of the time, when Josie drapes herself over the back of the couch like a cat to wait for her friend to come over. Or when she pokes Phoebe, yells, “Not get me!” and runs—a clear invitation to play chase. Or when she drops a book in Lydia’s lap and climbs up without invitation, confident that her sister will deliver the goods. Or when she walks into a room with her shirt pulled up over her face, as though this is a perfectly normal thing that people need to do from time to time.

Three is a year of big feelings, but it’s also a year of deep connection: Josie has always been a part of our family, but now she is a walking, talking, opinion-having, joke-cracking, kitty-loving, chase-playing part of it. And that is worth every single meltdown.

Holy Week: An Emotions Primer
Danielle Hitchen; Jessica Blanchard (2019)

February 1, 2019 / 0 Comments

Psalms of Praise

These days, Josie exits a room just as quickly as she entered—a ringleted blur, sometimes wielding a ukulele, sometimes wearing pants (sometimes not). She is two, and she moves at full speed.

We have always lived in small spaces and have joked that we always have at least one less bedroom than we “should” have. Before the remodel, our home was 900-ish cozy square feet, and our kitchen was also our dining and school rooms. But on the other side of the remodel, we have a little elbow room and, to Josie’s delight, a little running room. Her track extends from the front door, through the kitchen, into the dining room and back, and she often jogs it in a monkey hat and little else, bellowing “Jingle Bells.”

She is a toddler in motion. And Danielle Hitchen gets that: Psalms of Praise is filled with encouragement for small readers to move and dance as we praise God. The readings on each page are short and center around an active verse from the psalms.

Jessica Blanchard’s illustrations add to the energy and joy of the book, and make it a fun one to read aloud with a little one (who may or may not wear pants).

Hitchen and Blanchard also collaborated on First Bible Basics, as well as on a few other books in the series that I haven’t yet read. But with these two, so far, they’re bringing theological meat to the board book set in a way that is active and honest but not oversimplified. I respect that, even as I jog along behind Josie, reading aloud.

Psalms of Praise
Danielle Hitchen; Jessica Blanchard (2018)

February 2, 2018 / 2 Comments

First Bible Basics

First Bible Basics is a board book written on two levels: on the ground level, it’s a counting primer based around core doctrines of the Christian faith—One God, Two natures of Jesus, Three persons of the Trinity, and so on.

But on the second story, it’s a theological primer for young readers, as Danielle Hitchen uses quotes from Scripture, hymns, old writings, or her own simple explanations to expand upon these core doctrines of the Christian faith.

Josie, at one, stays on the ground floor. We count commandments and beatitudes together, close the book, and go to bed. But four-year-old Phoebe rides up to the second floor, where we discuss those things a little more deeply. We read the verses and quotes and study the illustrations and sing whatever songs we know that go with them (after years of listening to Slugs & Bugs on repeat, this is a reflex. I can’t read “Matthew, Mark, Luke, John . . . ” without bursting into song).

Jessica Blanchard’s illustrations help articulate these truths for children (and, if we’re honest, adults). She represents broad, abstract ideas in a way that familiarizes readers with some of the wonders of our faith.

First Bible Basics would be a beautiful gift for new parents (or for new believers with a sense of humor). Hitchen and Blanchard have released a second book in the “Baby Believer” series, Psalms of Praise, but we don’t have it yet. It’s only a matter of time before I find an excuse to add it to our collection of board book theology.

First Bible Basics: A Counting Primer
Danielle Hitchen; Jessica Blanchard (2017)

Tag: board book (page 1 of 2)

Seek & Find: The First Christmas

Little Seed: A Life

Holy Week

Psalms of Praise

First Bible Basics

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