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.
After a good rain, we traipse through the backyard, my youngest daughters and I. We are hunting for snails.
We find one! A massive snail, the length of my six-year-old’s hand, glides across the path, his eye-stalks quest this way, then that. He is clearly driven by some sense of purpose—but where is he going? Where has he just been?
My daughter can’t help herself—she taps his shell, and the snail folds abruptly inward. He waits. Have we gone away yet? One stalk emerges, questing this way and that. The second emerges. Then he cautiously, patiently, he unrolls the rest of his slippery self and proceeds onward.
Our backyard is full of characters like this snail—chickadees sassing cats from the top of the fence, squirrels shimmying along the power line, roly-polys somehow always underfoot. And I can imagine James Witmer, author of A Year in the Big Old Garden, looking out at the inhabitants of his own backyard—sitting on a porch maybe, with his own kids—and asking these questions: Where is that cardinal going? Where does it live? I can see him inventing backstories for his nearest neighbors.
Because that is what A Year in the Big Old Garden is: a collection of sweet stories that revolve around those everyday backyard adventures of cardinals, rabbits, cats, and squirrels. The personality Witmer grants each animal feels accurate—a squirrel, though able to talk and have aspirations for his squirrel life, behaves the way any squirrel skittering through my own backyard does. The birds are birdlike, the bunnies behave like bunnies.
Through these lovable and believable characters, Witmer tells stories that feel at once old and new. I sense in them a hat-tip to Aesop, a wave to Thornton Burgess, and a respectful nod to Beatrix Potter. Witmer is clearly writing as part of an older tradition, and yet these stories feel as inventive and original as they do welcoming and familiar. Joseph Sutphin’s black-and-white illustrations carry on this pleasant tension between old and new as well.
Right now, when our yard is our world, these stories remind us how populated and colorful it is: we have our own family of chickadees living in a backyard birdhouse, and a neighborhood cat that—to our chagrin—SCHWALUMPs her way through our garden beds. We have the snails, congregating along the edge of the house, enjoying one another’s company in silence. A Year in the Big Old Garden gives us eyes to see the stories each of these creatures might live out around us. (And it makes us giggle as we read, which is always a plus.)
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.”
Until now, I have proceeded as usual with my publishing schedule. I usually plan out blog posts a few months in advance, so while our family found our footing under a stay-at-home order in Washington state, I let that schedule hum along and publish books I’d chosen months before.
But it occurred to me the other day that, really, I want to shift focus a bit while many of us face some degree of quarantine. For the rest of the school year, I’d like to share books that, I hope, encourage and equip you all during this strange season. Books for kids dealing with difficult issues. Comforting read-alouds that remind us of the big picture. Educational resources that are both enjoyable and easy to use. Devotionals that draw our hearts back to God when we are ambushed by fear.
I hope that you all are finding some measure of peace and comfort during this season when so much is uncertain. I find the greatest source of hope and courage in the gospel, which is not dependent on our circumstances, but was written for us long before any of us lived. Let us mourn our losses and bring our sorrows to God, our true and steadfast hope. And let us also rejoice in him, for he is our true comfort, and he will never change. My prayer for you, dear friends, is this:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Romans 15:13)
I passed over beautiful history books, thrilling science books, charming story books, and landed on this book: Window on the World. This, I thought, is the one thing I want to share with them this year.
Window on the World is a prayer resource for families filled with double-page spreads on different countries or ethnic groups around the world. Through stories and facts, authors Molly Wall and Jason Mandryk introduce readers to the culture, history, and Christian church of each country, while giving both an on-the-ground perspective of daily life and a flyover view of the country’s larger details, like population and geography.
We have worked our way through this one slowly, spreading each country’s reading over three or four days. And at the end of each reading, we pray—fumblingly, some of us very much with the training wheels on. We are new to praying as a family, and I’m grateful for the way this book has nudged us to think beyond the borders of our home, church, and city.
Of course I had no idea how this year would progress—I didn’t know we’d be homeschooling again by the end of it, or that the world would seem so unsteady. It is probable that life in these countries will look like different by the time this particular storm passes, but even so, I am grateful for the chance to gather together with my girls over empty lunch plates and pray for our brothers and sisters around the world, knowing that our Father knows their needs just as surely as he knows ours. When so much seems uncertain, it is good to clasp hands with my daughters and remember that.
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.
