picture book Archives | Page 34 of 40 | Little Book, Big Story

July 18, 2014 / 0 Comments

Tomie dePaola’s Book of Bible Stories

There is a spectrum of Bibles available for kids: at one end sits the actual Bible; at the other, the lovely picture books that give a faithful retelling of a single Bible story, many of which have appeared on this blog. In the middle sit the quality story Bibles like The Jesus Story Book Bible or The Gospel Story Bible. (I have banished from the spectrum books that are vacuous and cute, and reduce stories like “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” to a moral tale told in rhymed couplets from the spectrum. I’m a snobby book blogger. I can do that sort of thing.)

Tomie dePaola’s Book of Bible Stories sits just inside the spectrum, spine to spine with the actual Bible. It doesn’t point each story back to Jesus, but trusts that its readers have grown past the need for that and tells the stories in slightly adapted passages from the NIV translation, framed by dePaola’s gorgeous, full-page illustrations.

If your child is ready to move past story Bibles and into the realm of Scripture itself, Tomie dePaola’s Book of Bible Stories serves as a great bridge: though we prefer the ESV for our family readings, the NIV makes a nice introduction to the language of the Bible for kids that find the ESV too ponderous at first. It is also a great reference for tackling specific stories as they come up in conversation. (Not only that, but it is somewhat of a classic, so it’s easy to find secondhand.)

Tomie dePaola’s Book of Bible Stories
Tomie dePaola

June 27, 2014 / 0 Comments

The Lightlings

If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time at all, you’ve heard about R. C. Sproul’s picture books. You know that he writes parables for children that encapsulate the gospel and that he favors the voice of a grandparent talking to a child. His stories usually go like this:

1. Child has problem.

2. Grandpa comes for dinner, listens to child’s problem; responds with bewitching phrase, like, “I think I might know a story about that.”

3. Child goes wide-eyed, listens in wonder.

4. Grandpa tells story, and it is the gospel, every time.

Like Sproul’s other books, The Prince’s Poison Cup and The Donkey Who Carried a King, The Lightlings gives families an idea of how the Gospel appears in even the smallest of challenges. The story has to do with a fear of the dark, but it also has to do with the God who created the light and the dark and who reached into the dark to rescue the people that He loved. It works on two levels at once so skillfully that we have given this book to a friend whose son was afraid of the dark and heard later that it was, in fact, helpful for him at bedtime, because it reminded him both that God was greater than his fears and that he wasn’t alone in being afraid of the dark.

But Sproul does more than tell a good story: at the back of each book is a catechism-style appendix that answers the many questions that children might have about the story with verses straight from Scripture. If it’s helpful for families to see that the Gospel can meet them in the daily business of life, it’s equally helpful to know that the Bible can give satisfying answers to our questions.

Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Justin Gerard’s illustrations. To put it simply, they glow: he uses light and dark skillfully to expand the tale of The King of Light and his subjects, and contains a quality that I’ll call, for lack of a less cliche description, “breath-taking.” In his work, I’m learning, there’s typically one picture per book that makes me say softly, “Wow.” I don’t know how he does it.

The Lightlings
R. C. Sproul, Justin Gerard (2006)

June 13, 2014 / 1 Comment

To Everything There is a Season

To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Those words and the verses that follow them hold the whole of our earthly lives in brackets. They have a rhythm, a beat, a pulse like the one that thumps through our days:

. . . a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up; . . .

These verses do not mention God at all, but omit the soaring melody of life’s song and focus instead on that persistent, beating drum:

. . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; . . .

How can eight verses summarize, so fully, an entire life? The language reads so simply that I can see why it would appeal to illustrator Jude Daly, whose paintings depict that simplicity in a gentle, detailed style. She does not touch the global significance of the words (these things happen to each one of us, after all), but instead focuses on a single, South African family, showing the seasons of the earth through the changing seasons of the family’s life together.

Her illustrations do justice to the verses, even the heart-breaking ones:

. . . a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

To Everything There is a Season is the sort of book that is enjoyable for its own sake, but that could also serve as comfort for families that find themselves in one of the darker times: the time to lose, to break down, to cast away, perhaps. It’s one that we borrow from the library every so often, both to remind ourselves that our lives here have a rhythm, a tune guided by a perfect conductor, and because it is, to put it simply, a beautiful book.

To Everything There is a Season
Jude Daly (2006)

Speaking of seasons, Phoebe turned six months old today. That shouldn’t surprise us, but somehow, in the tradition of parents everywhere, we find ourselves caught off guard by the fact that time does that thing it always does and marches on, making our children older every day. With one kindergarten graduate under our roof now and one baby who was just born a week or so ago turning six months old, I find myself ruminating on the rate at which time passes these days (and, on a possibly related note, eating a lot of chocolate).

I think Lydia has been just as excited about Phoebe’s un-birthday as she has been about finishing kindergarten. Whenever I mentioned her last day of school, she sort of acknowledged that I’d said something about school and then added, “And then the next day? Do you know what the next day is? Phoebe’s six-month birthday!“

I can’t blame her, though. It is exciting.

And lastly (but not leastly), to Mitch: Happy Father’s Day! May your mustache be ever lustrous, your daughters ever reasonable and your garden ever weed-free and bountiful. From smallest to largest (that’s me), we love you.

June 6, 2014 / 2 Comments

Does God Know How to Tie Shoes?

I’d hazard a guess that anyone who spends time with a child of three or four is familiar with one simple word: “Why?” It is endless in its variations, relentless in its application, and astonishing in its ability to reduce the full-grown human brain to a bowl of quivering mush, capable only of whimpering feebly, “I don’t know! That’s why!”

On good days, I’m quick with my answers, willing to sit at my daughter’s (pick one) level and explore the world of the pill bug/neighbor’s dog/pumpkin vine. On bad days, I . . . well, I wish I could answer as beautifully and quickly as the parents in this book seem to do.

Does God Know How to Tie Shoes? is a series of questions and answers, passed back and forth between a girl named Katrina and her wise, Bible-minded parents. There’s no narrative, only questions (in the voice of spunky, sweet Katrina) and answers (in the voice of her parents, who draw from the Psalms to answer Katrina’s delightfully offbeat—but believable—inquiries about God).

“Mama, does God ever have to clean up His room?”

“He wakes the dawn and makes sure the seasons change. Yes, He keeps everything in order.”

“But even in His closet?”

The illustrations are beautiful, textured and rich, and they show both the wideness of the creation Katrina contemplates with her parents as well as the intimacy of small moments spent together as a family. For an impulse buy at a secondhand bookstore, Does God Know How to Tie Shoes? delivers. And reading it to an inquisitive child serves as a welcome reprieve from those other questions: the ones not about God, but about paper and laundry and cotton balls . . .

Does God Know How to Tie Shoes?
Nancy White Carlstrom (1996)

Gratuitous Baby Photo!

May 16, 2014 / 0 Comments

3 in 1: A Picture of God

God is like an apple.

When put like that, the Trinity sounds simple. Suspiciously simple. In fact, it sounds almost as though the author is shrinking a profound truth into a cute metaphor, reducing a mystery into a comfortable object that we can hold in our hand. I had my reservations about that, but this book received such consistently glowing reviews on Amazon that I decided to take the plunge and see how, exactly, God is like an apple.

Prepare yourself: this is yet another glowing review of 3 in 1. Of the books we’ve purchased recently, this is one of the best—a crystal clear picture of God and the Gospel that loses nothing in the telling but instead added to my own understanding of the Gospel by explaining the way that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit interact when a person comes to faith in Christ.

This is theology for kids in the best sort of way. Marxhausen doesn’t talk down to kids, though the language she uses is clear and simple. The illustrations are simple as well, but the images the artists use are somehow just right for illustrating the unseen, successfully using color and shape to depict God in a way that doesn’t flirt with breaking commandments.

That said, I want to close on a very clear note: I heartily, heartily recommend 3 in 1. I’m sure you can think up some excuse to go buy it right now, right?

3 in 1: A Picture of God
Joanne Marxhausen, Ed Koehler

Tag: picture book (page 34 of 40)

Tomie dePaola’s Book of Bible Stories

The Lightlings

To Everything There is a Season

Does God Know How to Tie Shoes?

Gratuitous Baby Photo!

3 in 1: A Picture of God

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