This review might seem a little redundant. I did just write about another Sally Lloyd-Jones book, after all, and I reviewed a book about Psalm 23 not long ago. I even went on about books on Psalm 23 in that post, saying that they were nice and all, but that not many were worth sharing.
But the next month Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago released a book on Psalm 23, and of course it’s worth sharing.
Found is a bigger-than-usual board book that pairs the text from The Jesus Storybook Bible‘s Psalm 23 with Jago’s illustrations of a shepherd and his sheep. Of course, that’s the approach that I ultimately shrugged my shoulders at in my January post, but Jago’s interpretation is anything but bland. His shepherd is tender with his sheep in a way that seems just right for a book aimed at the littlest readers.
An aside: I love Jago’s illustrations in The Jesus Storybook Bible. But his newer work is amazing—take a look at his Etsy shop and you’ll see what I mean. This book, like Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing, is done in that newer style, and I love it.
So, once again, Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago, the super group we know and love, have illuminated a well-worn passage of Scripture in both word and image. I tucked this beauty away and will give it, I think, to Phoebe for Easter, because it’s just perfect for giving to little people for Easter. What will you do with your copy? (Because you’re buying this right now, aren’t you?)
There comes a time in every book reviewer’s life (I assume) when the book titles trickle in slowly. Sometimes, they arrive in a rush of books so beautiful that I’m left with a full and happy editorial calendar—those are the good days. But sometimes, I’m left trawling through that vague “Religion” section at the library or clicking thumbnails on Amazon almost at random, hoping there’s a new book out by a favorite author or something worth sharing with you.
I’m in that place now: there are a number of new books coming out this spring (by Jennifer Trafton! And Douglas Kaine McKelvey!), but they’re not here yet. And I have a number of books on hold at the library, but I’m not holding them yet. And so I went book-hunting on Amazon and—success!—found The Lord’s Prayer.
I have reviewed a number of Tim Ladwig’s books, and I know by now that his illustrations don’t sit quietly in the background, behaving nicely while the text tells the story. No, they spring from the mind of a storyteller: as the text tells its story in print, Ladwig tells his in pictures, harmonizing with the written word and illuminating the humor, heartbreak, or joy in each sentence.
The Lord’s Prayer is no exception: many of us have heard it recited plenty (our church says it aloud together every Sunday), and so I imagine it’s challenging to find a way to illustrate such familiar words. But by centering his illustrations around a father and daughter who set out to serve an old woman, Ladwig shows how each line of the prayer can be lived out in practice. A whole story unfolds behind Jesus’s words, and it draws them out of the realm of rote repetition and holds them close enough for us to see what it looks like to ask God for “our daily bread,” or to “deliver us from evil.”
This book quickly became a favorite among our girls. We had fun finding details in the illustrations and talking them through together (“What is she doing? Why do you think he did that?”). But Ladwig’s strength, really, lies in his characters’ faces—he gets those expressions just right, and that brings his paintings to life. A gentle look passed between father and daughter, or the grateful smile of an old woman convey as much or maybe more than plain text could.
Our first two daughters ate homemade baby food. They experienced story time at the local library and were both potty-trained by the time they were two.
They did not, however, have sisters big enough to tote them around, sing them beautiful nonsense songs, and read them board books from the moment they were born. They did not have a mom who had learned some things the hard way and lightened up a bit.
So, I suppose it works out for everyone, right? But I do miss that “potty-trained by the time they were two” bit. Potty-training in the more usual way, it turns out, is just as much work as practicing EC with a baby, except that babies are pretty chill about the whole thing and toddlers bring a little more sass (and mobility) to the endeavor. There have been days when Mitch and I sorely needed someone to help us laugh about it.
I ordered Skip to the Loo, My Darling! on a day when potty-training morale was particularly low—”We will be doing this for years to come” low—thinking that, if anyone could write a potty book that would make us laugh at ourselves while also, fingers crossed, make the potty seem slightly more appealing to our reluctant pupil, it would be Sally Lloyd-Jones.
It was Sally Lloyd-Jones.
Her playful rhythm and just-right rhymes had both Phoebe and me in giggles by the end of the book. Skip to the Loo, My Darling! became Phoebe’s favorite for days, and none of us (big sisters included) grew tired of reading it to her or exploring Anita Jeram’s delightful illustrations. Phoebe took it to bed with her at night and slung it into our laps first thing in the morning.
She also, fingers crossed, made great strides in potty-training shortly afterward. I like to think that a certain skipping bunny had something to do with that.
When you’re growing your first baby, people are quick to tell you how that baby will change your life. They know; you don’t. So they feel free to share. One of the things strangers were most eager to tell me, in a doom-and-gloom, beginning of the end sort of way, was that I would never sleep again. Never. Which I knew was an exaggeration, but still: I like sleep. My eight hours have always been there, more or less waiting for me, as long as I got in bed in a timely manner and claimed them.
But then I had my first baby and realized that, when the childbirth class teacher said that babies need to eat every two hours or so, she failed to mention (or I failed to hear) that I may or may not get fifteen to thirty minutes of sleep myself between feedings. “Never” was an overstatement, but when I was in those first days of my first baby’s life, it didn’t feel that way: as I snuggled the child whose dark curls struck me with awe even as she hauled me out of sleep again and again, I thought (as much as I could think anything then), “My word. They were right. I’ll never sleep again.”
When I was expecting my fourth baby, though, folks were not quite as quick with the ominous warnings. I think they assumed that I knew what I was getting myself into, which was fair, but here’s the funny thing: we seasoned parents, we parents of multiple children, who have done this many times before, are surprisingly quick to forget what having a baby is like when we don’t actually have one. As the babies become toddlers, we forget about waking every few hours to cuddle, rock, pat, and shush. We forget what it’s like having an infant.
And then we have one, and we remember.
Having a baby is glorious in so many ways. I’m one of those obnoxious people now who revels in it, who likes the smell of my baby’s neck and who gets all starry-eyed every single time she sneezes, and who turns to mush in the presence of a friend’s newborn. I never thought I’d see the day—me, the one who had never changed a diaper until I had my first child and who babysat only when my mother made me do it—but there it is. I love babies.
I even love teething babies, which is fortunate, because I have one of those now. Growing teeth is hard work, and hard work, when you’re a baby, calls for mom-snuggles in the wee hours. But because I usually like to sleep during the wee hours, I find myself sleeping now in the less-wee hours. And that is when I usually write.
So that’s why this post is mostly about sleeping and not sleeping. I’m trying to tell you about Tomie dePaola’s beautiful book Look and Be Grateful, but all that’s coming out is paragraph after paragraph of nonsense, all of which could be summed up in four words: “People, I am tired.”
It is fitting, then, that this week I’m reviewing a book on gratitude—a very short, simply worded book on gratitude. Of dePaola’s many books, this one reminds me most of Let the Whole Earth Sing Praise: the gentle illustrations, the carefully curated text, and the small format make this book, too, one that is clearly meant to be held and savored by the littlest readers.
“Open your eyes, and look. Open your eyes, and see, and say thank you”
This is a quiet meditation of a book that does my soul good, even as I read it to Phoebe before her nap, even as I fight to stay awake while I read it to Phoebe before her nap. It is a book that I love sharing with all of my daughters, big and small, because I want gratitude and wonder and thanksgiving to saturate our days as a family. I want to take that gratitude and wonder with me, too, into the wee hours, when I wake with the baby again, but can still marvel at her dimpled hands as she nurses, can still wonder at the weight of her and the way we were meant to fit together. I can remember:
“Today is a day, and it is a gift. So, be grateful.”
On That Note
I’m taking next week off. All that baby-snuggling means I’ve had little time to write and little brainpower with which to string words together and no time to take photos of anything (except the baby, of course), so I’m going to give myself a week of grace to catch up on sleep and blog posts. I have a bunch of good books to share with you, though, so I’m excited to get back to work!
Of all the psalms, this one feels most familiar. This is the one I recite to myself when I can’t fall asleep, the one I’ve taught my daughters to recite to themselves when they can’t fall asleep, the one whose images are comforting in an unfluffy way: David talks about The Valley of Death, after all, so this psalm is assurance for very real suffering.
There are a number of good picture book versions of this psalm out there, but none that have made it onto this blog yet. I don’t know exactly why that is, but until now, I returned every one to the library without feeling the need to review it. Barry Moser’s version is different.
By following a shepherd boy through his day’s work, Moser takes a fairly standard approach to illustrating this psalm, but instead of featuring a Sunday-school David in short bathrobe and sandals, Moser models his shepherd on a young Caribbean boy. Moser’s shepherd wears modern day clothes, squints into the sun, and tends his sheep gently as the text of the psalm follows him from scene to scene.
“The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.“
Putting these familiar words into a fresh setting made me listen closely as I read them to my daughters. It reminded me that the Lord is my shepherd, yes, but he is also their Shepherd. And your Shepherd. And the shepherd of the shepherds tending flocks near the equator. His gentle hand guides and comforts me in trial, but his reach extends even to islands in the Pacific, where the trees are laden not with prickly evergreen boughs but with slender palm leaves. His reach extends further even than that.
The comfort of Psalm 23 runs deeper, then, when I realize that, though the flock of sheep he tends is vast, our Shepherd cares for us all. He knows not only my name, but yours too, and that of the boy Moser modeled his shepherd on.
That is, I think, why Moser’s Psalm 23 connected with me more deeply than any of the other versions I’ve read. His illustrations are light-filled and beautiful, and they present Psalm 23 as a psalm for all of us, no matter where we live or what we look like. He illuminates the goodness of our Shepherd through the picture of one faithful young boy.
