picture book Archives | Page 27 of 40 | Little Book, Big Story

March 4, 2016 / 4 Comments

What is Easter?

Sometimes, you want the deluxe explanation for a holiday. You want to know its origins, and how the celebrations have changed with time. You want to know how the holiday is celebrated in various corners of the world. Other times, you have a fidgety toddler in your lap, and then you want to cut to the chase.

What is Easter? does exactly that. With engaging illustrations and rhymes, Wummer and Adams take us through the different details typically associated with Easter—chocolate bunnies, Easter chicks and new dresses, to name a few—and then cut to the core of the celebration with a neat turn, reminding readers that, while those things might have their place in a family celebration, they don’t lie at the heart of the holiday. That spot is reserved for Jesus.

Some folks might find this book a little too sweet and tidy, but our girls enjoyed it and I was delighted to find something direct enough for my youngest but deep enough for my oldest. (Plus, it’s a board book, which makes for a great “first Easter” gift for babies.)

What is Easter?
Michelle Medlock Adams, Amy Wummer (2006)

Stay Tuned for the First-Ever Little Book, Big Story Giveaway!

Next week, I’ll be hosting my first giveaway here—something I’d only do if I had something really good to offer. And, friends, I do have something really good to offer: a copy of the brand-spankin’ new Slugs and Bugs album, Sing the Bible Vol. 2!

Check the blog next Thursday for details on why you’ll want it and how to enter.

This post originally appeared on this blog on March 22, 2013.

February 26, 2016 / 4 Comments

The Secret Life of Walter Kitty

Phoebe is cultivating a taste for literature. She refines it by marching into a room with a book in the air, calling, “I read! I read!” and waiting to see who interprets that rightly as “You read this to me” and makes space for her on the couch at their side.

With four potential readers-of-books at her disposal, her odds of finding one who isn’t chopping onions or doing schoolwork are good. And so, in the midst of the moments you’d expect in a home with three daughters (dress-up dresses flying, sudden tears over something small), I find moments like this one, where all three girls curl up on the couch together around the newest Elephant & Piggie.

The fun of having a toddler discover our library of books for the first time is that she brings back old favorites—books so familiar to the older girls (and to us) that they rarely make their way off the shelves unless Phoebe finds them and, drawn to anything kitty-shaped, marches into a room, waving them in the air. “I read! I read!”

That is how we rediscovered Barbara Jean Hicks’ book, The Secret Life of Walter Kitty.

I love everything about this book, from the hilarious storyline (narrated by Walter Kitty, whose delusions of grandeur are recognizable to anyone with a cat) to Dan Santat’s illustrations (which sent me looking for everything else he’d illustrated. Did you know he’s the author and illustrator behind last year’s Caldecott award-winning book?) to the fun of reading this book out loud, silly voices and all.

There’s no theological undercurrent to this one, no connection to Lent, just pure delight. It’s one I’m happy to sit down to again and again when summoned by the call, “I read!”

The Secret Life of Walter Kitty
Barbara Jean Hicks, Dan Santat (2010)

Sadly, The Secret Life of Walter Kitty is no longer in print, but there are some good deals on used copies online. And if you find one in a used bookstore, grab it! You won’t regret it!

February 19, 2016 / 2 Comments

5 Books to Read Together During Lent

Our church celebrates Ash Wednesday with a simple liturgy read in a shadowy room. We light candles, draw the sanctuary’s chairs into a circle around our pastor, the table, and the ashes, and at the end of the service, file up to our pastor and wait for our turn with the ashes. As he draws a cross in black ash on each brow, the only sound is his voice saying, musically, “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return,” to each of us. Even the children—and a high percentage of our small church body is under the age of five—fall silent for this.

Ash Wednesday leads us into Lent gently but decisively, just as Lent leads us toward Easter with the patience of a farmer sowing seeds. I love Ash Wednesday, though it tends to sneak up on me each year, coming as it does almost on the heels of Christmas. But this year, I got the jump on it: while planning posts for this blog, I saw it on the calendar and thought, “A ha! Not this year, my friend!” This year, I was ready for it. I dug out the Easter books and photographed them for you; I considered Lent with prayer for an entire week before Ash Wednesday.

And I gave thought to how our family would celebrate, which led me to think about how you might like to celebrate with your family. I suspect that, for both of us, a good celebration begins with good books, and with that in mind, I compiled a short list of books for Lent that our family has loved from year to year.

Petook, by Caryll Houselander

5 Book to Read Together During Lent | Little Book, Big Story

Houselander tells the story of Easter through a parallel story of a rooster named Petook; Tomie dePaola weaves little details into the illustrations that will surprise you and your little readers. (Read the full review.)

Peter’s First Easter, by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

Through the chapters of this picture book, Wangerin puts the reader right in Peter’s shoes, describing his love for Jesus, and his grief as he walks through the events of Holy Week. (Read the full review.)

The Story of Easter, by Aileen Fisher

The Story of Easter goes beyond telling the story of Holy Week (though it does that, too) and explains a bit about the traditions and symbols linked to Easter. This is one of my favorites. (Read the full review.)

The Light of the World, by Katherine Paterson

Though not strictly an Easter book, I love Katherine Paterson’s telling of Jesus’ life and think it perfectly fitting for Lenten reading, as it places Holy Week in a larger context and reminds us of what Christ accomplished on the Cross. (Read the full review.)

The Donkey who Carried a King, by R. C. Sproul

5 Beautiful Books for Easter | Little Book, Big Story

R. C. Sproul nests the story of the crucifixion within the story of a donkey named Davey. That story is nested, in turn, within the story of a young boy who is picked last for the team. It sounds confusing, but Sproul executes the story-within-a-story trick beautifully. (Read the full review.)

Lastly

These are my top five Easter favorites, but they are not the only Easter books featured on Little Book, Big Story. You can read the other reviews in the Easter section of the blog. I’ll share still more with you during the next few weeks, as a bookish way to observe Lent.

This post originally appeared on this blog in March of 2015.

January 29, 2016 / 5 Comments

The Complete Brambly Hedge

Late pregnancy and winter. Those two forces lean heavily on both my shoulders, keeping me mostly content to nap and read my way through January, one volume of Sherlock Holmes stories at a time. But every now and then, a breeze sneaks in the door when I let the cat out and it smells like life, little and green. Sometimes, that smell inspires me to bundle little girls into winter coats and froggie boots and take a stroll through the neighborhood, where forsythia buds stud certain lucky branches and the puddles look blue in the morning light.

Sometimes, that happens. The rest of the time, there’s Sherlock Holmes, tea, and fleecy blankets.

Oh, and Brambly Hedge. A few months ago, I asked folks in the Read-Aloud Revival forum for their favorite book recommendations from past episodes of the podcast, and the response was amazing—like asking a room full of kindergartners their favorite color and receiving a response that includes every color known to man and a few not yet invented.

That forum thread cost me a lot of money in new books—really excellent new books that wound up in everyone’s stockings at Christmas (Sarah MacKenzie compiled the list of recommendations for a “Best of Read-Aloud Revival” post on her blog, so you can see for yourself how great some of these recommendations are!).

One of the clear favorites among readers at our house was Jill Barklem’s The Complete Brambly Hedge, a collection of stories about English mice living in a hedge near a stream and having all kinds of cozy and seasonally charming adventures, perfect for reading together with tea and fleecy blankets. Barklem illustrates the stories in Potter-esque watercolors, complete with cutaways that show the mices’ homes in detail: these were easily our favorite pages, and we took our time poring over them (and wishing that we were smaller and lived in tree stumps).

From the moment I opened this book I knew that my daughters would love it, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much they loved it: Lydia and Sarah now answer to Shell and Primrose and Phoebe (the poor third daughter who ends up being Olaf to their Anna and Elsa) is Shrimp. They have taken these mice into their hearts and adopted them as their own—the best seal of approval they can give.

Brambly Hedge
Jill Barklem (1980)

January 15, 2016 / 0 Comments

Read-Aloud Bible Stories

You know what reading to a two-year-old is like: if a book is about cows or kittens or is written by Sandra Boynton, I find I can usually make it through three or four pages before Phoebe tugs it out of my hands, closes it on my fingers, or wanders off to climb on something.

But the volumes of Read-Aloud Bible Stories are not about cows or kittens, and they are not written by Sandra Boyton: they are about Jesus and the Bible. In them, Ella Lindvall tells the stories of Scripture in the most basic yet enchanting way imaginable, and when I read them to Phoebe on the morning of her second birthday, here is what happened: she listened. She cuddled up to me as I read all five stories, and she listened. Lydia and Sarah, too, inched closer to us as I read, and all three were disappointed when we reached the end and had to go eat birthday pancakes for breakfast (theirs is a hard lot).

Read-Aloud Bible Stories: great story bibles for toddlers! | LIttle Book, Big Story

By the end of the book, the stories’ magic had worked on me, too: Lindvall doesn’t grasp for big theological ideas here, but tells the familiar stories of Zaccheus or Blind Bartimeus in a warm and welcoming way. She draws lessons from the stories that appeal to the smallest readers (and to those of us grown-ups still willing to admit that we need reassurance sometimes that God hears us, too).

I haven’t found many Bibles geared toward toddlers that are worth sharing here on the blog—it’s hard to capture the truth and beauty of Scripture in three stanzas of rhymed verse, and you can only appropriately add so many cows and kittens to beloved Bible stories—but Read-Aloud Bible Stories are absolutely worth sharing. We promptly ordered the second volume (Merry Christmas, Phoebe!) and look forward to collecting the rest of the set over the next few years.

Read-Aloud Bible Stories
Ella K. Lindvall (1982)

Tag: picture book (page 27 of 40)