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.
We’ve read many, many picture books in our twelve years as parents. But the books our readers and pre-readers alike tend to pore over and explore most on their own are the ones with detailed illustrations filled with lots of things to find—I Spy; Where’s Waldo; the Usborne Things to Spot books. These books combine play with very short stories (sometimes shown only through the illustrations) and allow kids to see books as something to be explored as well as read.
Sarah Parker’s Seek and Find: Old Testament Bible Stories combines this style of book with eight Old Testament stories, written for the youngest readers. Each double spread drops readers into a single scene in the story and gives them a key full of things to find in André Parker’s delightful illustrations: ten white dandelions, five heavy hammers, two wooden wheelbarrows, and so on. The front of the book introduces additional things to find in each story, including a little wren who appears in every single one.
If you’re looking for in depth re-tellings of each Old Testament story, this probably isn’t the book for you. But if you are looking for an interactive way to introduce a child to some of the Old Testament’s Greatest Hits—especially if you’re looking for a great way to discuss some of those stories with a young child—look no further! Seek and Find gives little ones plenty to explore and search for while they listen to some of the greatest adventures in the Old Testament.
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.
When reading a picture book about the creation of the world, one doesn’t expect to make it a third of the way through the book before God actually creates anything. But Quina Aragon’s book Love Made spends the first part pages looking not at what God has made but at who he is. He lacks nothing, but lives in perfect joy; he is three in one.
This language banishes the Far Side image of God at a drafting table, compass in hand, and suggests a God so exuberant, so perpetually filled with delight, that his joy spilled over “into what we call creation.”
Aragon is a spoken word artist as well as an author, and her words leap and soar and spill over the page, with a rhythm as fun to read as it is to listen to. Scotty Reifsnyder (Exploring the Bible) captures that same bright energy in his illustrations, making this book a treat to read to the littlest listeners (but don’t be surprised if bigger ones drift in to listen, too).
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.”
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.
