elementary Archives | Page 12 of 19 | Little Book, Big Story

November 15, 2019 / 0 Comments

Tales of the Kingdom

The way I used to feel about the new dELiA*s catalog: that’s how Lydia feels about the catalog from Lamplighter Books. Before it hits the kitchen counter, she whisks it away, and when I find it next, there are stars in the margins by the titles she most wants to read.

And thus, she deserves credit for discovering today’s series. After her starring and dog-earing spree, she spent the better part of her savings on the Tales of the Kingdom trilogy. The day it arrived was the first day I found a box of books on the porch that wasn’t addressed to me. Calling her down to check the mail felt like the passing of some torch.

In the catalog blurb, Lamplighter Books compares Tales of the Kingdom, favorably, to Pilgrim’s Progress and The Chronicles of Narnia—an ambitious comparison, certainly, but not unwarranted. This series has the allegorical feel of both classics, and a similar knack for inviting deep truths in the side door while you’re distracted by a wonderful story. I do not think I will summarize the plot for you, because I enjoyed diving into this series equipped only with the Lamplighter blurb and Lydia’s endorsement. But know that this is a delightful set of stories, and I can’t stop thinking about them.

The Tales of the Kingdom books are pricey, but they’re worth it. They’re a little dated, but in this era of ’80s nostalgia, that’s pardonable. These are stories that I savored when I read them alone and that now hold all four of my daughters rapt at the table after school when we read them together. And I am so grateful to Lydia for introducing me to them.

I encourage you to purchase these through Lamplighter Books rather than Amazon, because Lamplighter is a company worth supporting! But used copies do crop up on ThriftBooks from time to time, so you might be able to save some money by purchasing through ThriftBooks.

The Tales of the Kingdom Trilogy
David and Karen Mains (1980)

November 8, 2019 / 0 Comments

Last Stop on Market Street

Not only has this book been in the world for a while, winning awards and such, but it has also been on our shelves for a while. And I’m sure I had read it to someone before; I know I had read it to myself. But recently, Phoebe and I snuggled on the couch with this book spread across both our knees, and the pinball struck home: the story sunk in, and I came back to it after the girls were in bed, to read it again on my own.

Last Stop on Market Street, if you haven’t read it yet (though you probably have), follows a young boy and his grandmother as they ride the bus through their town. We see them leave church in the beginning of the book, but until the last pages, we don’t know where they’re going. The boy grumbles the way we all often do: Why do they have to ride the bus? Other people have cars. Why doesn’t he have a phone? Those big kids do.

But the way his grandmother answers his questions unhooks his eyes from fleeting pleasures and fixes them on the pleasures before him: You don’t need little music threaded through earbuds—you’ve got live music right here. Your poor friends in their cars—they miss meeting all the people here on the bus. They’re poorer for it.

There are lots of books out there about gratitude, but this one shows us what it looks like. I want to have eyes, like the grandmother’s, that see gifts in the most unlikely things. I want to remember that I am owed nothing, but have been given much.

When we learn where the boy and his grandmother are headed, it makes sense. For a woman who sees the world the way this one does, her gratitude must overflow into kindness.

Last Stop on Market Street
Matt de la Pena; Christian Robinson (2015)

November 1, 2019 / 0 Comments

God Gave Us Sleep

A note to three-year-olds everywhere: if your parents buy you this book for your birthday, they are almost certainly hinting that it is time to start sleeping through the night. (We were when we bought this for Josie.)

Lisa Tawn Bergren’s God Gave Us series is lovely and I’ve reviewed a few of them here. But none have garnered as dedicated a following in our home as this one: for a time God Gave Us Sleep was Josie’s favorite pre-nap read. She flipped through it after I put her to bed, and I often found it on the floor beside her when she woke up, as though it had slipped out of her hands when she drifted off.

And it is a book worth reading and re-reading. Bergren explores sleep and why it matters; through the story, she shows what happens and how we feel when we don’t sleep well, and she reminds readers that sleep is not a punishment or an inconvenience but a gift from our loving God. Exhausted parents know this. Three-year-olds don’t always, so I’m thankful for a book that gently explains it.

Josie has finally started sleeping through the night, though she will sometimes come quietly into our room and wait for us to wake up and take her to the bathroom. She never tells us she’s there, but lets us become gradually aware of her presence by singing “Happy Birthday” softly to herself. That’s so much better than how she used to wake us that we don’t even mind.

God Gave Us Sleep
Lisa Tawn Bergren; Laura J. Bryant (2015)

Jesus and the Lion's Den, by Alison Mitchell | Little Book, Big Story

October 4, 2019 / 0 Comments

Jesus & the Lion’s Den

I try to rein in the superlatives here, because I assume that you don’t want to read, week after week, that I thought a book was “extra super truly amazing.” I assume you’d rather not wade through the adjectives to reach the punchline, which is that, yes, I loved the book.

But this book, Jesus and the Lion’s Den, the newest addition to the Tales that Tell the Truth series (a series beloved in our home and on this blog), is extra super truly amazing.

Each book in the series tells a Bible story, and each one does it with an eye toward the gospel: “What does this story tell us about Jesus?,” the authors ask. But Jesus and the Lion’s Den is still more purposeful about pointing the story forward to Christ.

Alison Mitchell tells the story of Daniel in a way that doesn’t only show readers how it connects to the story of Jesus, but allows readers to work it out for themselves (spoiler alert: there’s a code). Catalina Echeverri’s illustrations are vibrant and expressive, as always.

This series continues to be one of my favorites, and Jesus and the Lion’s Den is an extra super truly amazing new addition to it. (And they just keep coming! I can’t wait to read this one.)

Jesus and the Lion’s Den: a True Story About How Daniel Points Us to Jesus
Alison Mitchell; Cataline Echeverri (2019)

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.

June 28, 2019 / 0 Comments

Bible Infographics for Kids

Important Notice:

Last year, we held a family meeting to settle our last-day-of-school tradition. Because I get to (sort of arbitrarily) pick which day is our last, this seemed important. And because, at the time of the meeting, we were at the beach with a trip to Menchie’s dangling in front of us like a sprinkle-coated carrot, the vote was unanimous: our last-day-of-school tradition shall henceforth be a day at the beach and a trip to Menchie’s.

That day came two weeks ago. We spent the morning picnicking on a rocky Pacific Northwest beach, rummaging through tidepools and climbing massive sandstone boulders, shaped through centuries of the water’s patient work (insert homeschooling metaphor here). We watched a trio of bald eagles swoop overhead, scraped our knees on barnacles, and petted sea stars.

The Last Day of School! | Little Book, Big Story

Then, we concocted the most horrific frozen yogurt sundaes at Menchie’s: mine had more to do with peanut butter and chocolate, but there were some variations on a cotton candy + marshmallow sauce + sprinkles happening among the other members of our table. It was all very pink.

But I digress. What I meant to say was: we’re done with school. Summer is under way! And with it comes my annual summer break. Until mid-September or so, I’m going to share one of my favorite old posts with you every other week, so this will be the last new book review until the fall. But I hope to meet you on the other side with a whole bunch of beautiful new books. (I have a pile of them waiting for you already.)

In the meantime, may your summer be sticky, sandy, and sunny!

But this book can’t wait until September.

For those of you who annotate and doodle your way through every sermon or lecture, who find that listening to audio books is like not reading the book at all, who decode thorny problems by drawing them out in spidery graphs with squiggly lines—you visual people (you’re my people!). I’m talking to you.

Bible Infographics for Kids (subtitle: “Giants, Ninja Skills, a Talking Donkey, and What’s the Deal with the Tabernacle?”) is a collection of—wait for it—Bible infographics for kids. These are big, bold, graphic illustrations that, in the words of this book’s authors, “help [us] see information that might otherwise be hard to understand.” For the visual learners among us, getting to “see” information means we’ll also remember it. For all of us, it’s fun.

In Bible Infographics for Kids, the authors and illustrator use maps and probability charts and comparisons to bring home some of the weirder truths of Scripture (did you know that the odds of one person fulfilling just eight Old Testament prophecies is the same as someone finding one specific coin in a pile of silver dollars so big it covered the state of Texas two feet deep? Me neither. And yet Jesus fulfilled forty-eight Old Testament prophecies!).

But my favorite part, the book’s crowning beauty, is a Bible board game that is really a visual map of the Bible’s narrative. It’s color-coded. It’s clever. And it’s glorious.

I have found all of my kids (and some of their friends) curled up with this book at some point. I have even curled up with it myself. And despite the fact that I have been reading the Bible for nearly twenty years now, I still learn something new every time I pick up Bible Infographics for Kids: how the disciples all relate to one another! Which disciple took the gospel to which part of the world!

These may not be facts necessary to our understanding of Scripture, but they sure highlight the patterns and context of Scripture in a way that helps me (and, Lord-willing, my kids) better know and love its Author.

Bible Infographics for Kids
Harvest House; Brian Hurst (2018)

Tag: elementary (page 12 of 19)

Tales of the Kingdom

Last Stop on Market Street

God Gave Us Sleep

Jesus & the Lion’s Den

Bible Infographics for Kids

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