picture book Archives | Page 9 of 40 | Little Book, Big Story

April 2, 2021 / 0 Comments

Jesus Rose for Me

In the decade or so since we bought our house, I have planted many things: rhubarb, periwinkle, strawberries, summer after summer of vegetables, even a few forsythia bushes. But a few weeks ago, I planted our first tree—the first living thing that may outgrow and outlive us.

I named him Pevensie, in honor of the apple orchard in Prince Caspian, and settled him into a pit in our backyard while two houses away roofers cussed theatrically over the thock, thock, thock of their hammers. It was all very romantic.

But planting a seed is always an act of hope, or at the very least of wishful thinking. We scatter wildflower seeds each year for the bees, and every fall we shake the poppy seed pods all over our flower beds (and driveway—our little ones mean well). We plant seeds in the hope that they will emerge in the spring, having bided their time and done battle with birds and rocks and frost. We plant an apple tree—which is, at this point, basically a large stick harvested from a very kind friend’s yard—and hope that it will weather not one winter but dozens. May it survive not a handful of birds but a hundred, coming year after year to bear its fruit away.

And so it is with Easter: a season of hope, in which all creation seems to participate, when the brambles and bare branches that seemed dead only a few weeks ago start running with sap and putting on buds. Outside and in, this is a time of transformation. So it is, also, with parenting: all these little conversations are like seeds sown in our children’s hearts that will, Lord willing, blossom and bear fruit years from now.

Jared Kennedy’s Jesus Rose For Me is an excellent little Easter-seed, meant for the soil of the tiniest hearts. Kennedy has slowly and quietly become one of my favorite current authors for children, as he writes in a way that explains tricky concepts so beautifully (more on his Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible in a separate post!). But this book is the Easter book I was looking for, all those Easters I spent years searching for a great book about the Resurrection for toddlers—not too graphic, you know, but not too fluffy either.

Jesus Rose For Me begins with Palm Sunday and ends with the Resurrection, and invites readers into the story of Holy Week. Trish Mahoney’s illustrations, too, are rapidly filling our bookshelves, as she brings a bright simplicity to each story and captures so beautifully some of the more abstract portions of Scripture with symbols that just make sense to toddlers. I believe this book is comprised of excepts from Kennedy’s story Bible, and each one ends with a discussion question. Those questions are, I think, where the tilling comes in: Josie loves these questions, and I love hearing her answers. As she talks, I can almost see the seedlings sprout.

Jesus Rose for Me
Jared Kennedy; Trish Mahoney (2020)

March 19, 2021 / 0 Comments

Easter is Coming

I’m used to feeling like an oddball during Lent—fasting privately and aware, perhaps, of a few other friends from church who spend the weeks leading up to Easter forgoing good things and meditating on what is in us that made the cross necessary. We gather at church on Sundays and sing the “Kyrie Elieson”—”Lord, have mercy upon us”—while our neighbors go about their spring-time business.

But last spring, I saw grief, fear, and uncertainty in the eyes of our neighbors, cashiers, and teachers (as they passed my daughters’ school books through the passenger window of my van). We all felt it: This is not how it’s meant to be. Something has gone horribly wrong.

This spring is, already, gloriously different. Last week I took my daughter with me to the store for the first time in a year. We had dinner with vaccinated family members—indoors, not around the firepit in the driveway. The neighbor I’ve brought groceries every so often told me that she’s almost clear to do her own shopping, and I wanted to cry and hug her right there in her front yard.

Crocuses, snowdrops, chickadees—they’re all going about their usual spring business, but I want to beam when I see them. They are still going! We are still here. We aren’t finished with this pandemic, of course, but we’ve made it this far.

And Easter is coming.

Tama Fortner’s picture book is full of movement, color, and light—it captures all this perfectly. Beginning with the beginning, Easter is Coming follows the story of Scripture from the garden of Eden onward and shows how every chapter of the story points to Jesus’s resurrection—and how even our chapter, now, points back to it.

I am a little in awe of how she manages this—in a board book, no less!—but she succeeds beautifully in showing how Jesus’s death and resurrection is the climax of all Scripture. Wazza Pink’s illustrations give the story texture and a lovely sense of abundance.

We are not out of the woods yet, I know. I know. And it’s tempting to believe that a “return to normal” is the thing our hearts truly long for. But Easter reminds us to set our sights higher: whatever comes next, the cross is behind us, and Jesus’s resurrection is finished, for our sake. The next time we see him will be his true return; he will set all things right. Easter is coming!

Easter is Coming
Tama Fortner; Wazza Pink (2019)

Sammy and His Shepherd, by Susan Hunt | Little Book, Big Story

February 12, 2021 / 0 Comments

Sammy & His Shepherd

The Lord is our shepherd—but what exactly does that mean to a child who lives miles from the nearest sheep?

In Sammy and His Shepherd, Susan Hunt walks families through the twenty-third psalm one verse at a time, showing readers what it means for a good shepherd to lead his flock to still waters or through dark valleys. She does this through the story of Sammy, a sheep who lives within the Good Shepherd’s fold, and of Sammy’s friend, a neglected sheep living in the neighboring pasture.

Sammy’s friend has never experienced the care that Sammy’s shepherd gives him, and as Sammy explains it to her, Sammy begins to appreciate more fully the gift it is to belong to the Good Shepherd. And when the shepherd purchases Sammy’s friend and welcomes her into his flock, Sammy walks alongside her and helps her learn to trust her new shepherd’s care even when she doesn’t fully understand it.

Part devotional, part storybook, Sammy and His Shepherd illustrates the relationship of a good shepherd to his sheep so beautifully that I find myself thinking about it still, weeks after we finished the book. And it’s clear I’m not the only one still thinking about it: our daughters have been sketching sheep and shepherds since the book’s end. By telling this as a story, rather than as a straightforward devotional, Susan Hunt has given us something to picture when we read Psalm 23. And she has helped my daughters take that psalm—and the glorious truths within it—to heart in a new way.

Sammy and His Shepherd: Seeing Jesus in Psalm 23
Susan Hunt; Cory Godbey (2008)

December 18, 2020 / 0 Comments

Mary’s First Christmas

Scripture doesn’t tell us much about Jesus’s childhood—just that it happened, and that he never sinned. But what was it like to be the sinless son of God, a perfect child in a fallen world, born to a mother to whom some fragrance of disgrace must have clung?

Walter Wangerin, Jr., writes a beautiful book about those years. Told from Mary’s perspective, Wangerin imagines the child Jesus asking again to hear the story of his birth. We see his trust and her faith, as again she tells him what we call the Christmas story, but what was, to him, his story.

Like Peter’s First Easter (also by Wangerin), this is a longer picture book, full of human emotion and honesty. Reading it, we’re not tempted to think That’s how it was, but That’s how it could have been. The characters’ responses ring true and point us back to what we do know about those years: Jesus was God made flesh, a holy and perfect God bound by all the limits of humanity—and childhood. And his mother was young. She trusted God. Whatever it cost her she said, on our behalf, “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

In other news, The Good Book Company (the publisher that brought us the wonderful Tales That Tell the Truth series) shared a list this week of 7 Christian book reviewers to follow in 2021—and they were kind enough to include me in the list! If you’re on the lookout for good books (as I assume you must be if you hang out here), I encourage you to browse the list and get to know the other reviewers—there are some excellent reviewers on the list, and all of them were new to me!

Mary’s First Christmas
Walter Wangerin. Jr.; Timothy Ladwig (1998)

December 11, 2020 / 0 Comments

Letters From Father Christmas

The Christmas that J.R.R. Tolkien’s son was three, he found a letter addressed from the North Pole. In a shaky, spidery hand, the letter’s writer introduced himself as Father Christmas; he enclosed a self-portrait for Christopher, who had wondered what he was like.

Every year after that one, Tolkien wrote a letter for his children from Father Christmas. He illustrated many of them and, as Father Christmas, described the adventures of the North Polar Bear and the Red Elves, of the Snowmen and the goblins. These stories clearly flow from the same source as The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but there is a coziness to them, the warmth of a father writing for his kids alone.

After Tolkien’s death, his children collected and published these letters, as well as the illustrations. Though the original letters were meant only for his children, Letters From Father Christmas is still delightful to those of us outside his household: in our home, it is one of our most beloved Christmas books, the one I often find one daughter or another curled up with while a cat lies draped across her lap. Tolkien aimed for the hearts of his children, but he won our hearts as well.

Letters From Father Christmas
J.R.R. Tolkien; ed. Baillie Tolkien (1976)

Tag: picture book (page 9 of 40)

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