michael hague Archives | Little Book, Big Story

I made it my mission this year to find unusual Easter books, books that play variations of Easter’s main themes rather than hammer out the melody over and over. That is, I went looking for books that don’t recount the events of Holy Week in the usual way.

Michael Hague's Easter Treasury | Little Book, Big Story

We have a number of books that do that and I love them, but reading them repeatedly for the forty days of Lent can deaden the power and beauty of the resurrection story a bit by Easter, so this year, we tried something different: in Lent’s early weeks, we’ve been reading from books like At Jerusalem’s Gate and this one, Michael Hague’s Family Easter Treasury. We’ve been savoring variations upon that main theme, whetting our appetite for the rich feast of books to come.

This book is similar in style to The Children’s Book of Virtues (also illustrated by Michael Hague). It contains accounts of the Easter story, but they’re tucked into a well-chosen collection of fairy tales, folk tales, poems, hymns and stories that all touch on Easter in some fashion. The stories we’ve read so far have been beautiful—”The Maid of Emmaeus,” especially, and “The Selfish Giant.” We’ve savored them slowly as a part of our homeschool mornings, and they’ve already become a valuable part of our Easter library.

And Easter is coming! Soon we’ll pull out the old favorites and set this new favorite aside, but right now, this treasury is just right.

Easter Treasury
Michael Hague (1999)

“What do you need for the baby?”

I found that question hard to answer when I was pregnant with our third daughter. No baby toys; no bibs; no onesies. We had all of those in the attic and we know by now that items like that only see daylight for a few months before returning to the attic for years, so I found myself looking for things that would grow with Phoebe, that she could enjoy not only as an infant, but as a child and later, perhaps, as a mother herself. The answer was obvious: books.

The ladies at our church were kind enough to throw a baby shower for Phoebe and for another family in our church who had just had their third son, and it was a joy to come home with a few handmade gifts, a baby item or two, a pan of lasagna, and three gift bags full of books. They really did well, those ladies. Aesop’s Fables, A Child’s Book of Prayer, Misty of Chincoteague and this, The Children’s Book of Virtues, were among the first titles that I dove into, though Lydia and Sarah were happy to rummage through the whole stack, reading (Lydia) and “reading” (Sarah) aloud from the new books to themselves and each other.

The Children's Book of Virtues | Little Book, Big Story

I’ve written before about The Book of Virtues—the full, deluxe version—so this post might seem redundant. But The Children’s Book of Virtues is a find in its own right, and one that we’ve found nice and accessible for everyday use. The book is a large format picture book, fully illustrated, with only a handful of selections from The Book of Virtues, all geared toward a younger crowd (you won’t find Aristotle in here). That makes it a great introduction to folk tales, fairy tales and moral tales, one that the kids can savor themselves, while The Book of Virtues waits patiently on the shelf, until pulled down every once and a while for the sake of an especially good story.

The Children’s Book of Virtues
William Bennett, Michael Hague (1995)

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Michael Hague’s Family Easter Treasury

The Children’s Book of Virtues

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