While we’re living lives close to home—perhaps homeschooling kids we hadn’t planned on homeschooling or filling time with toddlers but without libraries—please feel free to comment below or email me (thea@littlebookbigstory.com). I would love to help you find good books for your family! I can’t drop them off at your house, but I can at least try to find some titles your family will love. (And thank you so much to those of you who reached out last week! It is a joy to get to help out somehow, even from afar.)
You know that middle part of the Bible with all the skinny books by people with names like Habakkuk and Obadiah? That’s a mysterious stretch of Scripture, even for many adults. But 30 Prophecies: One Story invites kids to consider those books (the minor prophets) as well as the better-known major prophets (like Isaiah and Jeremiah), by connecting those prophecies with the One who fulfilled them—every single one.
Though a picture book, 30 Prophecies: One Story is a devotional intended for older readers. Paul Reynolds lays each prophecy out in a way that helps readers grasp the context for the prophet, the prophecy itself, the way Jesus fulfilled that prophecy, and the way that prophecy connects to the rest of Scripture. Each reading closes, as well, with an application section and a prayer. It’s a beautiful and coherent way to read the Bible, and for my history-minded daughter, I think it’s a way that will resonate with her.
In hindsight, this would have made an excellent devotional for Lent. Ah, hindsight. As it is, it would be a great Easter gift (and will be, in our house).
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.
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?”
I don’t know what you thought when you saw the title of this book, but I thought, “Yes, a new one!” I have long loved Church History ABCs and Reformation ABCs and, frankly, everything I’ve ever read by Stephen J. Nichols or seen by Ned Bustard, so I had a hunch I’d love this book too.
But I also thought, “Oh, nice, Bible History ABCs—as in the history of the Bible.” What it is, though, is much better than that: Nichols uses the alphabet as a framework for telling the entire story of Scripture, from Adam to Zion. It has all the fun wordplay of the first two books, as well as more of Ned Bustard’s illustrations, which are somehow always just what a book needs.
Bible History ABCs includes a bunch of bonus material in the back—the sort of thing I like to get distracted reading while trying to tidy up our books—and tucked away in those last pages is a little spread about the history of the Bible. (Well played, sirs.) So this is not just an engaging look at the story of Scripture, but a thorough look at the story of Scripture. And it’s a book our family will revisit often, I can tell.
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
If I had the authority to bestow a title upon anyone, I’d dub Marty Machowski “The King of Devotionals.” We are reading or have read through several of his books, and each one looks closely at its subject—whether a particular book of the Bible, the entire Bible, one testament of the Bible, or systematic theology—studying it from this angle and that, and inviting the readers into a discussion that gets hands gesturing and minds pondering.
Prepare Him Room is no exception. Machowski uses a fictional story to stitch together an engaging fabric of Scripture reading, hymns, crafts*, and discussion questions. When we read through this book together last year, I found that that combination worked like magic on everyone from my ten year old to my two year old. (Bonus: Putting the accompanying album on after we finished reading made for excellent Christmas-themed dance parties.)
*Do you have to do all of the crafts? Of course not! We didn’t. (I honestly can’t recall us doing any of them. Unless baking cookies was one? We did that.)
