Sparking Everyday Discipleship

In this episode we look at several books about other cultures and books for and about TCK's (Third Culture Kids).

Books Discussed in This Episode:

Transcript:

Welcome to "Books that Spark" a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books, that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids.

I have some great books to share with you today. They are so fun to read, and they're about multiculturalism, about traveling, these are good for third culture kids. I'm going to just go through these. These are some of my favorite picture books. One is called Rice and Rocks by Sandra L. Richards illustrated by Megan Kayleigh Sullivan. And this is about a little boy who eats rice and beans all the time. And he calls them rice and rocks. Jasper is his companion, and he is a Congo African gray parrot. It's told in the first person by this little boy, and his friends are coming over. They're serving rice and beans, and he's embarrassed even though that's his traditional Jamaican dish that they do on Sundays. His bird friend teaches him differently. His bird takes him on an adventure, and they go to different countries. And in each country you get introduced to a different bird and you get introduce to a different meal that the people of that country eat, that includes rice and beans or rice and rocks. And so that goes through the whole story and it teaches you all these different recipes, all these different dishes from different countries. And then at the end, his friends all talk about how much they love his rice and rocks because at their house, when they're having a celebration, they eat this kind of food too. And when they're, you know, it reminds them of this, and it reminds them of that. And it just is so much fun to help a child recognize that they can embrace their culture, not be embarrassed by it, and enjoy the foods that are native to their country and culture. And that we're also not that different around the world. We all kind of appreciate the same things, and we celebrate our meals together. Different meals have different meanings. And I mean, every culture is that way in one way or another. It's just a very cute book.

Another one (I have several about food) is called How My Parents Learned to Eat by Ina R. Friedman and illustrated by Allen Say. This is about a mom who is Japanese and a dad who is American. Then when they start dating, they don't go to eat anywhere because he doesn't know how to use chopsticks, and she's afraid to try to use a fork and knife. Finally, they talk about it, and they wind up learning to eat each other's way. The man learns to use chopsticks and the girl learns to use a fork and knife, and they learn to appreciate each other's culture. And then of course, they get married and have a little girl named Ina. I love it because, of course, our family learned to use chopsticks. And I think they're way better to use than the forks and knives. But anyway—

This other one is a beautiful book called My Breakfast with Jesus, written by Tina Cho, illustrated by Guy Wolek. It is worshiping God around the world. It quotes at the beginning, Deuteronomy 12 seven. There you shall eat before the Lord, your God, and you shall rejoice you and your households in all that you undertake in which the Lord your God has blessed you. And in the first part of the story, it talks about when Jesus met with the disciples at the seashore and he fixed breakfast for them after his crucifixion in John 21, it shows different places around the world and how they have breakfast and how in each situation they have what they eat. But the similarity in every situation is that they pray and thank God for their food. Then it talks about each of the meals that are presented. It doesn't give the actual recipe, but tells you about them and the name of the dish. So if someone wanted to look up how to make them, they could, I'm only sad that they don't have my favorite breakfast in here from Asia, but that's okay.

Let me read you a short excerpt from one of the pages. It says, "Coffee diluted with milk warms Mariana's mug in Brazil. Her friends stop by so they can walk to school together. They gulp down ham and cheese with bread and pray together over school. A peppy way to start the day. A breakfast blessing." And then it has a side note. "Some Brazilian children drink coffee, which parents believe help them stay alert throughout the day. Brazil is the largest producer of coffee in the world."

And on each page too, as they describe the different breakfasts, it has an adjective, "a peppy way to start the day," "a loving way to start the day," "a sweet way to start the day." And so, I liked that as well, because I love words and language.

Another lovely book by Dorena Williamson illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright, and Ying Hwa-Hu is Colorfull (with two L's) Celebrating the Colors God Gave Us. And this one is more a multicultural book about the different colors around us, in dealing with skin color and how our skin color is different and embracing that and appreciating that in each person. It's a very nice book. It says, "Summer had finally arrived, and Mani was excited to blow bubbles and jump on the trampoline and climb trees. She and her little brother, Christopher, were waiting for their friend, Kayla, to join in the fun.

"Hi, guys want to see who can blow the biggest, most poppable bubble?" asked Kayla, as she climbed over the fence. "Wow! Look at my bubble," said Christopher, "It's full of swirly colors." "I've got colors floating in mine too," Kayla added. "I never knew bubbles could have so many colors," said Amani. And then grandma comes up and she says, "Well, you all are amazing bubble-makers," said Granny Mac walking outside to join the kids. "Look," said Christopher, "my bubble is ginormous and has 50 gazillion colors in it." "How about that?" said Granny Mac. "Aren't colors wonderful?" "Mine has pink and purple--my favorite," said Kayla." "Well, isn't that something," said Granny Mac. "Right in this backyard, what other colorful things do you see?" And so, they start looking at flowers. They look at the trees, they look at the animals, they look at fruits and vegetables, and then they start looking each other and realize that they have different colors as well and different colored hair, different color eyes. And then it says, "God must love color to have made all of Earth's people with such wonderful shades. That's something to celebrate. We can celebrate all our differences, the color of our skin, the texture of our hair, the shape of our eyes, nose and lips. Every single person is a part of God's grand design." And then it goes on and finishes the story in the end with colorful ice cream, which is a good way to end a story.

There's another really touching story called Far from Home: A Story of Loss, Refuge, and Hope by Sarah Parker Rubio illustrated by Fatima Anaya. And this one is about a refugee family and how they have to leave their home and go to a new place to be safe. The little boy is, of course, sad to leave his home. He's scared. He doesn't know what's going on and why they have to leave.

And then when they get where they're going, they have to wait and wait and wait. Then he doesn't like that either. But then this old lady from his country, who's already here. She starts sharing with him a story about another family that were refugees. And it's the story of Jesus and how they had to flee their country for Jesus to be safe. And then she tells what happened and how Jesus became the savior of the world. So she encourages him and lets him know that he's going to have a new home. Then he gets a new home and he embraces his new house and he likes his new room, but ends with a really positive note, even though they acknowledge it's not easy to move to a new country. And especially when you have to leave behind everything you love and know, you may never get to go back and it ends with the scripture from Matthew 2:13- 14, "An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. 'Get up, flee to Egypt with the child, Jesus and his mother.' The angel said, 'Stay there until I tell you to return because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.' That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother." This is a beautiful book and really deals with a lot of the emotions and feelings a child may have if they have to flee their country.

And one book I've talked about before that, I have to mention again, because I love it so much. It's called Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say, and this is his story, his grandfather's story and his own story about being Japanese American, well, being Japanese and immigrating to America and his grandfather's life and how he was always sad. You always miss the place you're not in, even though you love the place where you are.

And then one book that is rare, and I think you can only find it on Amazon, is a collection of stories and experiences from third culture kids. And it's called The Kid's Guide to Living Abroad written and compiled by Martine Zoer illustrated by Michelle Christensen. And if you get this book, you'll find one page that is actually written by my oldest daughter. Martine contacted several kids living abroad and had them share their experiences. It's kind of a cool compilation of different children's experiences around the world, living in a different country. Some are from the United States, some are from other places living in different countries. So it's not all just an American perspective of living abroad. I think that's kind of neat.

And there's a lot of books too. If you're in a situation with your kids being third culture kids, that's what TCK stands for third culture kids, children who have been raised in a culture other than their original native culture. They never quite fit in their original culture. They never quite fit in the culture they've adopted because you have a mixture of cultures. And like Allen Say says in his book, you know, the minute you're in one place, you miss the other place. Third culture kids live this way. And my husband's a third culture kid. My children are third culture kids. I've kind of become an adult third culture kid, but I can definitely see a difference between what my experience has been living overseas and moving back home and what my kids and my husband's experience has been. I'm more satisfied with just staying here and being home. This is where we are. I miss Taiwan. And if, you know, that door opened, I would gladly walk through it to move back there, but I'm okay being home too. But my kids are less satisfied, and my husband is less satisfied with just staying here. They really miss their home. And for my husband, Singapore was originally what he considered home, although he lived in Venezuela first, and his first language was Spanish. And then when he was eight or nine, they moved to Singapore, and he graduated from high school in Singapore and then actually went back for a while before finishing college. Then we moved to Taiwan after we got married and had been, well, in 1999, we moved to Taiwan. So he's lived more of his life in Asia than anywhere else. So that feels like home to him, and for my kids, they've lived, well, at least half their life in Asia because none of my kids are 30 yet, and we lived in Taiwan for 15 years. So, you know, at least half their lives were overseas, a difficult adjustment. So if you know anyone who is experiencing that, there's a lot of really great books for third culture kids. There's a lot of great books for those who are not third culture kids to understand third culture kids. If you happen to be a teacher and you're teaching third culture kids, whether they're missionary kids or refugees or whatever, you can gain so much understanding by reading some of these books for teachers of third culture kids, a couple of books for talking with and dealing with third culture kids. If you're a teacher or a caregiver, who's working with children, who've lived in more than one culture. A couple of books I can recommend are Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids: A Practical Guide to Preventive Care by Lauren Wells. It's got very short sections in most of the book and simple activities and ideas for helping children to deal with the grief and the trauma of moving from one culture to another of dealing with their own feelings of sadness and embracing the opportunity.

And that is one of the beautiful things about third culture kids and living cross-culturally is that you get to experience so much, and you get to meet people from so many other places. We could go pretty much anywhere in the world, and we have friends there. We may only have one friend there, but we have friends all over the world. And my kids love to know that they have friends all over the world, wherever they go.

And other one is Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds by David C Pollock, Ruth E. Van Reken, and Michael V Pollock. It says this book is "the Bible for anyone who wants to understand the blessings in the curses of growing up multiculturally." And that's a quote from William Paul Young, author of The Shack. This is the third edition. In the first edition. David Pollock started it. This was in 1999. "Third culture kids, TCK's, are not new and they are not few. They have been a part of the Earth's population from the earliest migrations. They are normal people with the usual struggles and pleasures of life, but because they have grown up with different experiences from those who have lived primarily in one culture, we have seen a set of patterns of behavior or reactions to life emerge that stem from the cross-cultural and high mobility aspects of their upbringing. As I have shared these observations with TCK's, their parents, teachers, and caregivers throughout the world, a multitude of TCK's have validated that this is indeed their story." This book deals with the experience of being a TCK and what that means. Just to understand the way they think, the way they feel. And my own experience has been that TCK's tend to react one way or the other when they grow up. They either stay put and never move again, or they never stay put. But I think that's very interesting. My husband is the one who never stayed put. His two brothers are the ones who never moved. They both still live relatively, well, one lives right in the same town where he has always lived since he got married or in the same vicinity; the other one lives within a short distance of where he has always lived. This book deals with adult TCK's, and how to have a healthy life as an adult, how to deal with your grief, how to deal with your feelings and experiences. And it is a grieving process. It took us with moving back to the States, I would say a year or two, to even feel at home. Again, we actually worked in an American church for three years and never felt quite at home, even though we loved the people and loved being there. And we are now working in an international church and feel much more at home in the international community. Finding those places where they can fit in and feel understood and deal with the craziness--that is who we are and what we deal with after living in other cultures. And this is becoming more and more a common part of people's lives. Now I think it's rare to find people who stay in the same place their whole lives. We are much more of a mobile world than we used to be and have experienced many more cultures. I think these books can be quite helpful in helping us to understand each other, helping us to understand ourselves, and to know how to deal with the feelings we have. But we can also do that through the picture books that I mentioned and help children to appreciate each other, to have understanding for each other, whatever, our different cultures, ethnic groups, whatever we're going through as different people, to learn to just be compassionate, to learn to be peacemakers, and to love one another and encourage one another. That's what we're commanded to do as believers in Christ. And it doesn't matter what age we are. That is the command that God has given us--to encourage one another, to build each other up, spur each other onto good works and to love one another. And so if we can help our children learn to appreciate people as unique individuals and look at different experiences in different cultures as something interesting to learn about and to often embrace or to appreciate at least, then life is full and life is rich. And I highly recommend getting to know some of the immigrants and refugees in your area and learning their culture, learning some of their language, and helping them to learn our culture and language.

Thank you for joining us for "Books that Spark," a podcast celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Please check out my website at TerrieHellardBrown.com. When you sign up for my mailing list, you receive several freebies, and joining my mailing list, you will get one to two emails typically per week: one when the podcasts posts, and one when I put up a blog post. This podcast posts each Tuesday; a blog post goes up each Thursday. And right now, if you go to my blog or to the show notes for this podcast, you will see a link to download the advent calendar listing a Christmas book a day for the whole month of December. I've also included a 25 Acts of Kindness file that you can use with your family. It's a free download as well. I tried to choose activities that are COVID- friendly. So, your family can find ways to do acts of kindness to bless people this season. Those are free for you to download, and I hope that you and your family can enjoy those books together and make memories together during this special holiday season.

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials.

Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.

Her blog posts are published each Thursday and discuss living as a disciple of Christ while discipling our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ.

For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on "the spectrum"), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.

Her motto is "Growing older is inevitable; growing up is optional" and keeps her childlike joy by writing children's stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.

Disclaimer: Although Terrie majored in psychology and sociology for her bachelor's degree and has taught AP Psychology, she is NOT a licensed therapist. She sometimes mentions items in her blog and podcast that could be considered comments on psychology, but these comments are based on ministry experience and ministering to people through the missions and church work she's done for the past 36 years. If you have questions about psychological disorders or counseling needs, please consider finding a reputable, licensed counselor in your area. Terrie's comments should be seen as anecdotal and ministry-experience-related or scripture-based. Thank you!

Keeping Christ at the center of our Christmas celebration can be challenging. Observing Advent can help keep our focus on Christ as well as build memories and family traditions that can make Christmas even more meaningful for our families.

Books Discussed in This Episode:

Transcript:

Welcome to "Books that Spark," a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids.

This has been one of my favorite weeks of the whole year on Thursday. We celebrated Thanksgiving and Sunday was the first day of advent. Today is the 1st of December, and in our house, we're already thinking of all things Christmas. Advent is not a traditional practice in my home church, but advent has always been important to me individually and especially as a mom. It has been important to me that we focus on Christ throughout the Christmas season. Traditions and making memories during this season are especially important to me. And I plan out the season each year, the best I can. When my kids were really little I'd plan when we'd bake cookies and watch movies and shop. And then a few years later, I became the choir director for our church, so the season was also filled with rehearsals and performances. And then I went back to teaching full time and the season got even crazier, especially because some of that time I was teaching in a country that doesn't have a Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday. So we worked all the way through the season and even on Christmas day. Making the holiday special for our family and focusing on worship took a lot of determination.

To help our kids focus on others rather than only on what they wanted, we would take them to Toys-R-Us, to shop for their siblings. It was so much fun. My best friend would come with us, so we could divide the kids up more and shop in different parts of the store. It was a great object lesson as they saw all those toys that they wanted but were required to think of what a sibling would want instead. And because our funds were always greatly limited, we would just have each child draw a sibling's name, so they could focus on that one person and we would give them an amount they could spend. And then we would shop. Of course, we also heard about every toy that they wanted to, but it became a fun event we looked forward to each year. It was also fun because we were shopping in an American store. Taipei had two Toys-R-Us stores back then. And so that was always really a treat for us.

And one of my kids' favorite parts of celebrating Christmas overseas was working with another ministry that would do a live nativity flash mob sort of thing in several places around Taipei, usually at a mall or other public area. And they would dress up like Roman soldiers, shepherds and wise men, and the group had live animals, and each participant would walk among the crowd of people. The wise man would come in trying to find the newborn King asking where he could be found, and they would speak their native languages, which were not Mandarin. So it added to that sense of mystery to the situation. And soon a crowd would gather to hear what was going on as the missionary playing one of the wise men would share the Christmas story and share the gospel in Mandarin. It was exhausting, but wonderful. And I think I'll share a few pictures in the show notes, just for fun, because it was such a neat memory and such a neat event for our family.

We have the tradition in our family on Christmas morning where we have cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate, which is definitely not our normal breakfast at all. And then we read the Christmas story. And after that we open prisons, we watch each person open their gifts. We enjoy seeing their reactions. So we aren't one of those pandemonium-ensuing-at-present-time sort of families. It's a time of really cherishing each gift that is given and enjoying seeing each person enjoy what they receive. And then after we finish the presents, it's time to go to my aunt's house for a family lunch together.

Now, when my mom was alive and we happened to be in the Midwest, Christmas was more complicated since my parents were divorced and we would have Christmas Eve breakfast with my mom and stepdad, and my sister's family would join in, and we would open gifts together at mom's house. Then we'd have Christmas Eve evening at my dad's with my sister and her family sharing gifts with Dad and his wife. And then Christmas morning was time for our immediate family. Then Christmas afternoon, we'd drive a couple hours away to my husband's family's Christmas. They always have Christmas lunch and open gifts in the late afternoon together. So that worked out very well.

I'm sharing all these things to point out that each family has their rituals or traditions and ways of doing things. And these are the "right" way of doing Christmas in our kids' eyes. Whatever we develop as a tradition in our family becomes something meaningful to our children that hopefully they will carry on into their adult lives with their family, with their children. And so for Advent, that's why we're talking about some of the things we can do for Advent to make this time special. And we find if we have to change those traditions, it can be upsetting. When we get married, merging traditions can be challenging. Our biggest problem in our marriage was Santa. My family did not emphasize Santa. We didn't have a chimney, and we had kind of a dysfunctional view of Santa. My grandma always told me that Santa would spit tobacco in my eye if he found me awake when he came. And when I asked my dad how Santa got in the house, since we didn't have a chimney, dad told me he came up our toilet since we didn't have a chimney. So I took it all as a bunch of silliness, and I never bought into it much. Although I loved the idea of Santa and the excitement of Christmas morning, just like any other kid. My husband's family, however, did Santa big. They were not very religious at that time, but they would go to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas day. And Santa was their main focus of Christmas. Dave's mom would totally redecorate the whole house for the holiday. So our compromise has been that we pretty much redecorate everything in our house from changing the pictures on the wall to putting up our Christmas town to having at least two trees in the house. We watch as many Christmas movies as we have time for. And we talk about Santa, even though we've always treated it like any other fairytale. We always made the distinction between the true story of Christmas and the fairytales surrounding the modern holiday with our kids. I do that too, with some of the stories that have been made up like The Fourth Wise Man, or, you know, the stories about the donkey, you know, from the donkey's perspective, clarifying with children, that this is an additional thing that is not found in the Bible to make it clear what is for sure true and what has been adapted and assumed or supposed might be true. We talked about St. Nicholas and the story of who he was and how from that we got our Santa Claus. And so I've just always tried to be very honest with my kids and enjoy the season thoroughly, but also didn't try to lie and manipulate. I just never liked that personally.

At our church, we had several traditions that added to the meaningfulness of Christmas, as you know, my husband is a pastor. And, and so as a pastor, he's directed us to do several traditions. Sometimes we've done a hanging of the green service on the last Sunday of November and had a celebration as we decorated the church for the holidays. And even when we didn't do that, we would still have a family tree. And this is a tree we had in the church in each family in the church would bring an ornament to hang on that tree and we would decorate it as a congregation.

We usually have a Christmas Eve service, but it's very family oriented. It's cozy and devotional in nature. Our Sunday before Christmas, we typically do a lessons and carols service. And our Cantata performances were usually the week before that. And each of these, we would pray over each of these services seeking God's leading on what he wanted us to emphasize each time. And I also pray that for my family, what is God wanting us to focus on this Christmas? And I got that from Carol Brazo book, No Ordinary Home. I believe it's out of print now, but if you can get ahold of a copy, it is an amazing book. That book changed my life as a young mom and as a young wife. Excellent, excellent book.

By the way, I have most of my service lineups, narrations, monologues available for free on my website. Feel free to check those out, use them if you would like to. And I hope they will bless you and your family and your church. Let me know if you use them, and let me know how it went and what you did with them. I have some children's plays, all kinds of things. So just check that out on my website at TerrieHellardBrown.com.

Of course, this year is very different, so we're still not sure how that is all going to unfold. But in our church, several leaders and members helped create an Advent devotional book leading up to the new year. It started on November 29th and is going to January 1st. And we mailed that to all our families. For Christmas Eve we'll probably have a video Christmas Eve service online where we'll use a lineup we've used before, where we light candles to tell the Christmas story and sing carols through the different parts of the story. And then have a time of prayer.

One of the things I've done to hopefully make this Christmas a little bit more meaningful is I've created a list of 25 acts of kindness that are COVID-friendly for you to do with your kids during this season., Feel free to download that. It will be in the show notes. And you're welcome to that as well as the Advent calendar that has been up for a few weeks with a story a day throughout the Advent season.

So as we start this Advent season, I wanted to go over a few options for Advent books and calendars. One of them I'll be giving away and you can enter by commenting on my blog. We'll draw the winner at the end of this week. So you need to comment quickly because I want to get that book to you as soon as possible, since we're already starting the Advent season.

And the book I'm going to give away is called The Jesus Storybook Bible a Christmas Collection: Stories, Songs, and Reflections for the Advent Season, by Sally Lloyd Jones and illustrated by Jago. And it's the book that I'm giving away. It is really fun. And one that your kids will enjoy with you, as well as enjoy reading it alone. It has buttons to push that help tell the story. It's narrated by David Suchet. Some of the buttons play Christmas songs, and it shares the story from the fall of man to the Wisemen. And each story is very short and will be easy to share each day leading up to Christmas Day.

Now some Advent devotionals tell the story from the fall of man to the Wiseman coming, or even to the second coming of Jesus. Some Advent devotionals share from Zechariah and Elizabeth to the wise men, and some devotionals share more the themes of advent or character traits that we want to emphasize. So I've gotten an advent devotional that kind of emphasizes each one of these for you to consider, depending on what you feel like you want to focus on with your family.

So the second one I have, if you're interested in adding a little more to each day's Advent experience, you may like The Way to the Manger: A Family Advent Devotional by Jeff and Abbey Land. And this one is meant to become a keepsake book for your family because as each year, you write down responses to the questions you can see your responses in the past and then add to it and make it kind of a journal almost, to be a keepsake for your family to enjoy year after year. And it is written for fairly young children, so as your family grows older, you may want to add to it or include a more in-depth devotional, but this one would be great for creating that positive experience for Advent with your young children as you're beginning these traditions with your children. This one is more of a focus on the themes of each week for Advent.

On the first day it reads, "Think about things for which you might wish. You might wish for a super-power like being able to fly, to leap over a building, or having incredible strength. You might wish that people didn't die or that you could go to Mars. Every year when you blow out the candles on your birthday cake someone probably encourages you to make a wish.

"Now think about the word hope. If you had to explain what hope means, it might sound a lot like a wish. It's really not. Hope is an expectation of something you know could happen. A wish is more like a desire for something that might not be as doable. When you study really hard for a big test, you hope you make a good grade. When you don't study at all for a big test, you wish for a good grade.

"The people in the Bible were hoping for the Savior. They believed what God said, and they were anxiously awaiting His arrival. They knew He was coming because God had promised it.

"Jesus also promised that He would return. Today, as we prepare to celebrate the first time He came to earth, we are hoping and waiting for Him to come again."

Then in the "Memory Maker" section each week, each family member responds to the questions. And week one asks, "What is something you hope you will get to do this Christmas?" And "What is something you might wish for even if you think it will never happen?" And these are the questions you can return to each year and answer with different answers each year. Then in one section, it has questions children can ask the parents and questions parents can ask the kids, and it has a discussion question. And each week has some "Taking It Further" questions where you dig into the scriptures even more and answer more questions. And also each week has a service project or activity your family can do together. So they focus more on the themes, like I said, of each week, rather than a chronological retelling of the Christmas or Bible story. It is more focused on discipleship and making Christmas meaningful.

I love character studies and emphasizing character traits with my kids. And this next devotional does just that by taking us through the different people in the Christmas story. It's called 25 Days of the Christmas Story and Advent Family Experience by Dr. Josh Straub and Christi Straub and illustrated by Jane Butler. Each day includes a scripture and a question for discussion. This one is brand new and it isn't available until December 10th on Amazon, but I think it would be a wonderful study to go through each character in the Christmas story and talk about the character qualities, the character traits, the lessons we can learn from each person in the Christmas story.

This next one would be a good choice for use in your homeschool possibly, if you want to focus your Bible lessons on Advent. It's called Getting Ready for Christmas: 25 Multiple Choice Bible Studies for Advent by Celesta Letchworth. This study is a chronological study of the Christmas story, starting with Zechariah and Elizabeth and each day has review questions and scripture to read and reread as more questions are answered and an added bonus in this study would be that it could help your child with their reading comprehension, but each day has a devotional thought for inspiring discussion, but it really focuses on answering questions and comprehending the Christmas story.

The next one is very unusual. It's called Christmas in the Heart: Advent Devotional Readings Based on Charles Dickens' Classic A Christmas Carol by Michael Armstrong hall. It's a fun devotional that I like a lot. Admittedly Dickens doesn't discuss Jesus in his story exactly. But this author does. It's very well done and a unique devotional covering the character qualities and the spirit of Christmas, but focusing on Christ. And so each entry has a couple quotes from the story, but then it also brings in a Bible verse that talks about the same quality, the same lesson, the emphasis of whatever the devotional is discussing. But A Christmas Carol is one of my absolute favorite novellas. I love that they have a devotional about it. This one is one I'm going to be reading this Christmas in addition to our church devotional, although I've already read a lot of it since I was preparing for this podcast, but I was still going to go over it each day as well.

Now, there are also a few Advent journals for kids. One I like is called, God with Us for Kids. And there is an adult version of this same journal if you're wanting to do the study and journaling together as a family, and it's from Love God Greatly Ministry, but there are several other journals. Or you could just get a notebook and give your children a prompt each day. There are some, if you go to some of the homeschooling and teacher websites, there are some websites for writing prompts for the whole Christmas season. And some of those have a Christian emphasis, but that's something you could choose to do as a family that could make this a very meaningful Christmas time.

I want to share two more books I really like. Both are board books that have ornaments to go with each day's devotional. One is Emmanuel God with Us Ornament Book with Advent Devotionals from Dayspring and the other is Jesus Is Born Nativity Ornament Book Advent Devotional for Kids also from Dayspring. These are so beautiful. And I love that after each devotional, a child can add an ornament to the tree as a reminder of that day's devotional. You could do this on your own with some planning if you wanted to add an ornament to each day's devotional in whatever book you're reading. That would be fun, but these are done for you. And then of course, there's the tradition of the Chrismon Tree. I had never heard of that when I was younger, but as an adult we've used it a few times, and the kids have helped me make the ornaments for the Chrismon Tree. It helps tell the story of Christmas within each of the ornaments. Typically, traditionally they are white or white and gold. And as you tell the story, you hang them on the tree. There's the dove and the cross and the Shepherd's hook. And you can Google that. I may put a link in the show notes to a website that shows you all of the different ornaments that you create to make your Chrismon Tree. So that would be another option along those same lines.

As I looked at several possibilities for Advent books, one common mistake or problem seems to be that many of them are not well formatted for Kindle. So I would advise you, whichever book you choose, to invest in the hard copy if possible. It becomes more of a keepsake that way for your family anyway. Many have places for journaling or answering questions that you can keep for your family as you celebrate each year, which makes that really special. But even if you do buy the Kindle version, just double check the reviews. Usually you'll see, I go to the ones because the ones tell you if the--mostly the one ratings on most books are because something's wrong with the binding on the book or the Kindle version doesn't work. So I always check those out to see if there's a problem with the Kindle version before I buy it. Just be aware that I did find that on a few of these, that they just aren't formatted correctly for Kindle.

I really hope that this Advent season will help us all to prepare our hearts for Christmas when we can just celebrate our Savior and the sacrifice he made in leaving his throne to come to earth, and then his ultimate sacrifice of dying for us on the cross and being raised from the dead victorious over our sin and over death, giving us new hope, giving us life. And I hope that this Christmas season is just very special for you and your family. This has been a long, difficult year for many of us. I pray that those who have lost loved ones and have gone through losses of jobs, that they would find peace that surpasses all understanding, that they would be comforted and filled with the joy of our Lord. This Christmas I hope your kids find peace as well, that they are encouraged, and that this time is truly a time of celebration.

Thank you for joining us for "Books that Spark," a podcast, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Be sure to check out my website at TerrieHellardBrown.com. When you sign up for my mailing list, you get access to several freebies that are available only to my mailing list. In addition, I have, right now, a link on my website and on these show notes for you to download an Advent calendar and the 25 Acts of Kindness that Are COVID-friendly. I hope these books and these suggestions, these activities, will just be a wonderful family time for you during this special time of year.

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials.

Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.

Her blog posts are published each Thursday and discuss living as a disciple of Christ while discipling our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ.

For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on "the spectrum"), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.

Her motto is "Growing older is inevitable; growing up is optional" and keeps her childlike joy by writing children's stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.

Disclaimer: Although Terrie majored in psychology and sociology for her bachelor's degree and has taught AP Psychology, she is NOT a licensed therapist. She sometimes mentions items in her blog and podcast that could be considered comments on psychology, but these comments are based on ministry experience and ministering to people through the missions and church work she's done for the past 36 years. If you have questions about psychological disorders or counseling needs, please consider finding a reputable, licensed counselor in your area. Terrie's comments should be seen as anecdotal and ministry-experience-related or scripture-based. Thank you!

In this episode we discuss the series of books Little House on the Prairie and several companion products to add to your experience with the series.

Books Discussed in This Episode:

Transcript:

Welcome to "Books that Spark," a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids.

Today. I wanted to talk about one of my favorite sets of books, Little House on the Prairie books. And I know they're very popular with many of you, and this time of year, for some reason, makes me feel like, you know, family gathering around. And it just reminds me of when we would read the Little House books and the family atmosphere throughout the books. And so I thought I would share some great resources that you can use to make this an even more meaningful time together as a family. If you're homeschooling, of course, these are like essential. If you're homeschooling in the United States, if you're homeschooling in Canada, I know most of my Canadian friends actually read Anne of Green Gables like we read Little House on the Prairie here, which I thought was really interesting. And that's another great series of books. In fact, I probably should do an episode on series of books that you can read with your children as a read aloud time as a family, that would probably include, Oh, it would definitely include Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, The Boxcar Children, Chronicles of Narnia, and I like The Magic Treehouse. And I know some people don't want magic stuff when they're reading to their kids, but I love The Magic Treehouse series as well. We have it in both Chinese and English. So those are some good series of books for middle elementary through upper elementary even that you could read with your kids. And if you're reading to your children, I think even starting in first grade, most of these would be fascinating to them. First of all, of course, we have to have the series, the Little House on the Prairie series and they have a new set of books that you can get where it's just in two volumes. That would be really nice to have the most common set of Little House books that we would find today written by Laura Ingalls, Wilder and illustrated by Garth Williams. Those are the ones we've had for quite a few years.

If your children are still picture book age, you're not quite ready to jump into chapter books together, then I would recommend A Little House Picture Book Treasury, which is Six Stories of Life on the Prairie adapted from Laura Ingles Wilder's books, rewritten by Renee Graef. These are available in one volume for the six stories, and it's a really pretty book. The pictures are inspired by Garth Williams. So they're very similar to the ones that are in the other books.

For digging a little deeper into the Little House lifestyle--Annette Whipple, which is this wonderful writer. I was so blessed to get to talk with her at a recent conference. She's very knowledgeable, and she writes a lot of educational books. She has written The Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion: A Chapter-by-Chapter Guide. And it's by Annette Whipple. This is the first book I would recommend if you're going to be teaching the Little House books or you just want to embellish your time of reading together, to dig a little deeper into the culture, to talk with your kids about what it was like to live during that time, and to answer more questions or to try some recipes or crafts that they did. This book is what you need to get. It's got 75 activities in it. It goes chapter by chapter, through all of the Little House series books. It's a great companion to the series. Then there are several books that I recommend if you want to go even further, but if you're only getting one supplemental book, this is the one I would recommend. And that's The Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion: A Chapter-by-Chapter Guide by Annette Whipple. Let me give you an example of what she gives you within this great resource. In Chapter One in the "Dig Deeper" section, it says, "Little House in the Big Woods, which is the first volume in the series takes place in 1871 to 1870 so about 150 years ago. On the opening page Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote that there were no houses near the Ingles' family. Though they couldn't see any homes from their cabin. They did have neighbors. Relatives lived nearby. They could even walk to their houses." So these are bulleted points that just give you a little bit more information. And that goes chapter by chapter through all of the books. It says, "Salting meat preserved it by keeping germs from growing. It also gave the meat extra flavor." And then, "Laura Ingalls Wilder was born seven miles or 11 kilometers Northwest of Pepin, Wisconsin in 1867. Pepin is still a small village today." Then she has a paragraph on butchering time and explains that. And then it goes on to Chapter Two. So it just gives you these little snippets of information that kind of enriches what we're reading and helps us to understand what we are reading in the books. There's pictures throughout the book, diagrams to do the different activities. The second part of this book deals with Laura's adult life. And like I said, in the first part of the book she's talking about "Live like Laura." Then there's a section "Live like Almanzo" and talks about his childhood and how to live like a little boy in pioneer times, which I appreciate that we can cover both. And then the last part covers her adult life and takes you to the different parts of where she lived in each book, where they're living in the different stories, and talks about those areas in the United States.

So then part two is "Life Beyond Little House," and she has a quote here from Laura Ingalls Wilder. "I Hate to write the end of the story. No, not the end, no story is ever ended." I love that this starts with The First Four Years when they were in Dakota Territory. She wrote this paragraph that I think is very interesting in this section. It says, "A different Laura? Laura seems different at the beginning of the first four than she did during These Happy Golden Years. With Laura's changes, the tone or feeling of the story changes too. Laura is optimistic in These Happy Golden Years. She trusts Almanzo, especially as a farmer and horseman. In the other Little House books, Laura was happy to help Pa with farm work. She didn't have to. Ma might have preferred that Laura not work in the fields yet. Laura helped care for the animals and worked in the fields during harvest. The character named Laura in The First Four Years said she didn't want to marry a farmer. She was concerned about the hard work of farming and lack of financial stability. Remember The First Four Years wasn't written as part of The Little House series; it was a new story. Like the other books, it was somewhat fictionalized. We don't know if Laura Ingalls Wilder changed the main character's view and tone for something her adult readers would like, or if it reflected her personal experience and feelings." So that's a quote from the second part of this book. And I think that's interesting. So in this section where it says "Live like Laura," it's "Grow a Geranium" and teaches you how to plant a geranium, cook cornbread, and those kinds of things. We know that Laura loved gardening. There is a whole book about gardening based on Laura Ingles Wilder's life. But I haven't read that one. If you search, you can find many, many books that you can look at that might be geared more toward what you're interested in working on with your kids. But this book is a pretty thorough reference tool that you could use. And like I said, I think it would be the first one I would recommend buying as a companion to the actual books.

Now there are some other books that are a lot of fun. This one's a little bit older, but you can actually get it on Kindle Freetime Unlimited if you're signed up for that with your kids. It's called Searching for Laura Ingalls: A Reader's Journey by Kathryn Lasky, and Maribel Knight is the little girl in the book and she helped write it. She's telling the story first-person from her perspective, and Christopher Knight, her father, took the pictures for the book, and they go on a journey to the different places where Laura lived, and she gets to see and experience some of the things that she reads about in the story, including getting leeches on her legs in Plum Creek. It's just a really neat book.

Another one that is really nice is called The World of Little House. And this is by Carolyn Strom Collins and Christina Wyss Eriksson. And this book also includes a lot of different crafts and lifestyle activities that they would do during that time. It gives you maps of the area and shows you just all kinds of things about life during the Little House period of time. It's a good companion book. It's very pretty. I mean, it's done really nicely like a keepsake book or a coffee table book. And so this is a really nice one. If you get it, I would advise getting the hard cover just because it is such a nicely done book for being kind of a special keepsake volume.

The next one is also a keepsake type book. And this one is called Laura's Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder compiled by William Anderson. This one is about her life, and it's like a visual biography. It takes you through her whole life into her adulthood and has a lot of photographs from the period of time and is like having a personal scrapbook or photo album if Laura had put one together for us to have. This one is really beautifully done. Again, it's like a keepsake volume. It would make a great gift for Christmas. And so this one, I would also get in the hardcover if you get it because it is such a beautiful volume.

There are several other fun books that go along with the series. One I have is My Little House Songbook. And this one is illustrated by Holly Jones, adapted from the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's just that it's a songbook of some of the songs that are mentioned in the Little House series. You can only buy this one used, but you can get it fairly inexpensively. And it's really cute.

Cookbooks--There are so many choices of cookbooks. If you want to get those, the same series that has the songbook also has a cookbook. It is still available. Recipes are by Amy Kotler. And again, it's illustrated by Holly Jones inspired by Garth Williams, but we also have recipes in some of the other books I've mentioned. Plus there are several other cookbooks you can even find, but I also wanted to mention my friend's books and she's the president for inspire Christian Writers. I used to be on their board. And if you know anything about inspire, then you know, Robynne Elizabeth Miller. She's a writer and speaker and coach and teacher. She has written several books about Little House on the Prairie. She has several books of recipes. One is Super Simple, Sweet Pioneer Recipes: Five Ingredients or Less. And then she has Slightly Strange Sweet Pioneer Recipes that Are Delicious, Slightly Strange, Savory Pioneer Recipes that Actually Taste Good. And then it seems like she has another one too that has five ingredients or less recipes. So she has all of those available. And one of them is actually on Kindle Unlimited right now. So you can read it for free if you want to get a picture of some of the recipes and what they're like. She clearly explains how to follow the recipe like if it involves canning, how to do that. And so they're great little books, Robynne Elizabeth Miller has also written The Three Faces of Nellie, which is based on the research that she has done. She's been researching the real people who were in Little House on the Prairie books. And so this wouldn't be for your children necessarily. This would be more for an adult reader who wants to learn more. And then The Mouth of Ma is another one, The Search for Caroline Quiner Ingalls. And this is about Laura's mom. These two volumes that Robin wrote are just really interesting books for doing a little more research on your own and learning a little bit more about how Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote. And then she has one more book it's called nonfiction Memoir or Fiction: Dissecting Works of Laura Ingalls Wilder. This one she did as part of her MFA degree is more of an educational look at the works that she did. It says, "Few American authors have produced a significant body of multi-genre work, which has then spawned a vast amount of biographical and historical documentation corroborating or disputing that work. Laura Ingalls Wilder; however, is one of those authors because of this rare convergence. Wilder offers a glimpse into the complexities of semi-autobiographical prose." So this is more a look at the writing, and I haven't read this book yet. So I'm going just by what it says on the website, but I know Robynne, and I know that she researches in great detail and is a brilliant person. So I think it would be a fascinating read. I have it on my wishlist to read and just haven't gotten to it yet.

Another book I'd like to recommend is called Devotionals with Laura: Laura Ingalls' Favorite Bible Selections by Dan L white. And this is a very nice book that shows the scriptures that she highlighted in her Bible, the notes that she wrote about different passages. It's just a wonderful little devotional book and shows more the writing for an adult than for children part of Laura's life. Shares her heart and how she felt in her commitment with God. It's really nice. That one I would highly recommend.

If you're interested in reading the Little House books with your kids and passing that along to them, what's so wonderful about it is sharing what life was like for the pioneers who began to settle America and came here from Europe and all over the world. And it shows some truly American historical things that, that I think are important to share with our kids. And I think it also shows our kids what we have today and how much life has changed. What I loved about the Little House on the Prairie books, for me personally as a child, is it kind of sparked that pioneer spirit in me. And so when God called us to go and to do missions, when we were called to move far away from our family at different times, it was like there was a part of me that was like, "Okay, we can do this." Part of that was because I had read all of these books as a child. And they had inspired me to know that we can face hardships. As long as we stick together as a family, we can go to new places and be brave and experience new things. And I love that we can inspire our kids through the books we read with them to explore life and to face challenges and to not be afraid of whatever God calls them to do. Because we've got the stories, in a sense, the testimonies of other people and what they have lived through and what they have experienced. And it can help inspire our kids. One of my daughter's friends had a Little House birthday party. They had no electricity in the house for the party, and they did pioneer crafts, and they all dressed in their pioneer dresses. They all wore bonnets and everything. They just had a fabulous time. I think it would be so much fun, at some point during the time of reading these books with your kids, to have a pioneer day where you go for a whole day without electricity, or at least a few hours without electricity, without electronics. And experience what life was like back then. So, however you use the Little House books with your kids. I hope you have a great time reading them together and enjoying them together. I hope they become an important part of your kids' lives and challenge them to have a pioneer spirit and to be brave enough to go and do whatever God calls them to do.

And since we're coming up on Christmas, I wanted to share a few story books that are based on the Little House series. One is a chapter book adapted for younger readers from the Little House series. It's called Christmas Stories. And it's by Laura Ingalls Wilder, but it is adapted for younger children. It is for children ages 6 to 10. And then there is a picture book for ages 4 to 6, that is Christmas in the Big Woods. And this one just has the story of Christmas in The Big Woods. The other one has four different Christmas stories from the Little House books adapted for a little bit younger reader. And then there's The Little House Christmas Treasury: Festive Holiday Stories that have the illustrations from Garth Williams and, of course, the stories from Laura Ingalls Wilder. And this is the Christmas story from each of the books in the original series. They just took the Christmas stories from each volume and put it into one book to be enjoyed at Christmas.

And then one final book I wanted to mention is called A Prairie Devotional: Inspired by the Beloved TV Series of Little House on the Prairie. And it's written by Wendy Lou Lee, who was Baby Grace, Laura Ingalls Wilder's baby girl. And she played Baby Grace in the TV series. And she's written a really wonderful book called A Prairie devotional. It's illustrated by Steven Noble. And this is just a very nice devotional book. The devotional talks about different things from the books and from the TV series and from her own life. It's just really nicely done. You will really enjoy the devotionals. They're very thought provoking, very inspiring, and nicely written devotionals. Well, let me just read an example. One of the excerpts, the quote is from season six, episode 11, called "Author Author," and Caroline Ingalls is quoted at the beginning saying, "You better get some more paper then your grandpa's got a whole lifetime of stories in his head." And it's called "Become a Storyteller." Wendy Lou tells the story of grandpa and how he, when grandma Caroline's mother passed away, he was grieving so much. He just wanted to give up. But then Albert asks him about his childhood and he starts sharing stories, and it causes him to come back to life in a sense. And then she talks about her own grandmother who did sort of the same thing. When her grandfather passed away, her stories kept her going and getting to share her stories, kept her involved. Wendy Lou asks us what stories we need to tell. Can we look at the ordinary in life as something special that God wants us to share with others? And then she ends this devotional with "Live your life in a way that your stories will be told a hundred times over." And then she quotes Joel 1:3, "Tell your children about it in the years to come and let your children tell their children, pass the story down from generation to generation." And then she has a couple of questions for thought at the end of that, but I love the format of these devotionals. It just kind of brings a lot to play in the stories and in the thoughts. It's just really kind of a sweet devotional. Again, that's called A Prairie Devotional by Wendy, Lou Lee.

As we close today, I just want to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving. This Thursday, we celebrate together, and hopefully we can celebrate with family either in person or on Zoom, but I hope that you are very blessed and that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your children, with your family, and that you feel very blessed by our wonderful God.

Thank you for joining us for "Books that Spark," a podcast, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Be sure to check out my website at TerrieHellardBrown.com. When you sign up for my mailing list, you get access to several freebies that are available only to my mailing list. In addition, I have right now, a link on my website and on these show notes for you to download an Advent calendar and also a thankfulness calendar where I give you a book a day to read--a suggested book--for each day of the month of November and December. I hope these books will just be a wonderful family time during this special time of year.

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials.

Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.

Her blog posts are published each Thursday and discuss living as a disciple of Christ while discipling our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ.

For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on "the spectrum"), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.

Her motto is "Growing older is inevitable; growing up is optional" and keeps her childlike joy by writing children's stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.

Disclaimer: Although Terrie majored in psychology and sociology for her bachelor's degree and has taught AP Psychology, she is NOT a licensed therapist. She sometimes mentions items in her blog and podcast that could be considered comments on psychology, but these comments are based on ministry experience and ministering to people through the missions and church work she's done for the past 36 years. If you have questions about psychological disorders or counseling needs, please consider finding a reputable, licensed counselor in your area. Terrie's comments should be seen as anecdotal and ministry-experience-related or scripture-based. Thank you!

In this episode we look at books to inspire creativity, teach about the humanities, teach art skills, and a couple for parents to read to inspire themselves.

Books Discussed in This Episode

Books to Inspire Creativity in Children:

Books with Examples of Great Artwork:

Books for Working on Art Skills:

Books to Encourage Mom and Dad in the Calling to Creativity:

Transcript:

Welcome to books that spark a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books, that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids. Today. I have some great books to share with you. We're going to be talking about creativity. And first I'm going to talk about a few books that can spark the desire to be creative and the encouragement to help our children take that step. That is sometimes a scary step to show their creativity and to enjoy it and to celebrate it.

One of my favorite books about this is called The Dot written by Peter H. Reynolds, and Reynolds has written several books about creativity that are really, really good, and also about being yourself and taking a chance and stepping out of your comfort zone to express yourself and to make a difference in the world through your own creativity and your own style of creativity. But this a very sweet book. It's about a little girl named Vashti who doesn't think she can draw. And so her teacher has her draw an orange dot on a piece of paper, and she said, "Sign your name to it." And then her teacher frames that picture and that encourages Vashti to try more and more and more. She winds up making a whole gallery of pictures. The book ends with another child coming up to her and saying, I love your artwork. I wish I could draw. And it says, "Vashti smiled. She handed the boy a blank sheet of paper, show me the boys. Pencil shook as he drew his line, Vashti stared at the boy's squiggle. And then she said, please sign it." We see her passing on the same thing to another child to encourage him to try to be creative. I just, I love the book because it celebrates, even if we think we don't have a whole lot of talent, what we can each do.

He has two different three-book collections or boxed sets. One is called The Big Dreams Collection and it includes Happy Dreamer, The Word Collector and Say Something. There's the box set Creatrilogy by Peter Reynolds. That includes the book, The Dot that I just mentioned and a book called Ish, which I just love. And a book called Sky Color. In Ish, it's also about a little boy. Who's drawing pictures and his older brother makes fun of him. And so he stops drawing because he thinks he's draws terribly. He tries and tries and tries and he just keeps walking up the paper and throwing it down. And he notices his little sister comes along, takes his crumpled paper and disappears with it. And he's chasing her down like, "What are you doing? Give me back that picture. You know, it's, it's not good. It's trash." And he goes into her room and she has covered her walls with all of his pictures. And he says, why are you doing this? These aren't any good. He's she's like, that's supposed to be a vase with flowers in it, but it doesn't look like a vase with flowers. And she said, yes, it does. It looks vase-ish. Every picture is something-ish. And so it's like, even though he doesn't feel like it's a perfect drawing, it's elephant-ish. It's, you know, dog-ish. And so that's why the book is called Ish. And it's so cute. And, of course, the pictures are really cute that he's drawing, but it encourages him to keep trying and to keep having fun with his drawings, even if they aren't what he would call perfect. And even though his brother gave him a hard time. Sky Color says, "Marisol was an artist. She loved to draw and paint. And she even had her very own art gallery." And her art gallery is on the refrigerator. "Not all her art hung in a gallery. Much of it she shared with the world. She painted posters to share ideas she believed in." And it shows "save the ocean." "At school Marisol was famous for her creative clothes, her box of art supplies in her belief that everybody was an artist. Yes, Marisol was an artist through and through. So when her teacher told the class, they were going to paint a mural for the library. Marisol couldn't wait to begin the classroom buzzed with the sound of brainstorming. The students talked and sketched together. They made a great big drawing. Then they marched to the library. Marisol shouted, 'I'll paint the sky!' Marisol rummaged through the box of paint but could not find any blue. How am I going to make the sky without blue paint? The bell rang. It was time to put their brushes down for the day. As she climbed aboard the bus, Marisol kept wondering all the way home. She stared out the window. The sun lowered closer to the horizon later at home. Marisol watched the day, turned into night. That night, Marisol settled into a deep dream. She drifted through a sky swirling with colors, the colors mixed making too many to count in the morning. Marisol stood waiting for the bus in the rain. The sky was not blue. She smiled at school Marisol raced to the library. She grabbed a dish and began adding colors. This one, that one, she swirled the brush to make an altogether new color. Marisol then began painting on the wall. The boy asked what color is that? That Marisol said that is sky color." And then it shows the mural, and the sky is full of all the sunset colors and stormy colors and everything else. And it's really quite beautiful.

Another fun book to just encourage children to play with color and paint is an old one, but a good one called Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh. In this book, there's three white mice and they're trying to hide from the cat. And so, they stand on a piece of paper, and they just blend in. The cat can't find them. But then one day while the cat was asleep, the mice saw three jars of paint, one red, one yellow, and one blue. "They thought it was mouse paint. They climbed right in. One was red, one was yellow, and one was blue. They dripped puddles of paint onto the paper. The puddles looked like fun. The red mouse stepped into a yellow pedal and did a little dance. His red feet stirred the yellow puddle until 'Look,' he cried. 'Red feet in a yellow puddle, make orange.' The yellow mouse hopped into the blue puddle. His feet mixed and stirred and stirred and mixed until I looked down and said the red mouse and the blue mouse, yellow feet in a blue puddle make green in the blue mouse, jumped into the red puddle. He splashed and mixed and danced until purple. They all shouted blue feet in a red puddle make purple, but the pain change on their fur got sticky and stiff. So they wash themselves down to a nice, soft white, and they did that in the cat's water dish and painted the paper. Instead they painted one part red and one part yellow, and one part blue. They mixed red and yellow to paint an orange part, yellow and blue to paint a green part and blue and red to paint a purple part, but they left some white because of the cat." I think it's such a cute book.

When we're talking about creativity there's also more than just painting and drawing. Of course. And so, I've got one about dance. This is Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae and illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees. In this book, Gerald is a tall giraffe, and he's got these long legs, and he's kind of clumsy. He buckles at the knee and falls down, and so then he's dreading it because they have a jungle dance every year, and all the animals go to the jungle dance and they just love it. But he feels really bad because he just can't dance. So he just kind of leaves the party while they're all having fun. And he's out in the middle of nowhere and there's a cricket in a tree that talks to him, and he sees the moon and it inspires him. He finds that he just can start swaying to the music he's hearing. And he starts to do this beautiful kind of like a ballet. And after he's been dancing a while, says, "Gerald felt so wonderful. His mouth was open wide. I am dancing. Yes, I'm dancing. I am dancing," Gerald cried. Then he goes back to the party and he's dancing. It shows him doing kind of a ballet. And then he ends in almost a disco pose, but anyway, he's able to dance and it ends with the idea that "We all can dance," He said, "when we find music that we love."

And then there's a couple other books and I know I'm sharing a lot, but in this section, I have more than in some of the other sections that I'm going to be talking about.

There's one, it's called, How Do You Dance by Thyra Heder? And in this one, it's really cute. It goes through all the different moves and different ways people dance and just celebrates dance in general. And then there's The Beautiful Oops by Barney Salzburg. The book itself is part of the story, the illustrations, but also the pages like it starts out with a tear. There's actually a tear in the page, and then you turn the page and that becomes the mouth of an alligator. It's showing how a pop of color can become this or that. It's really cute. And of course I love, and I've mentioned before in another episode, My Mama Had a Dancing Heart by Libba Gray is an excellent one for inspiration. And another one for inspiration that I just love is Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O'Neill, and it's illustrated by John Wallner. And I have mentioned this one before, but I think it's a very powerful book when it discusses color and poetry and inspires both. And I believe I have a lesson plan that I have offered for free on my website for that, if you would like to download that.

Now, I believe that we can also inspire our children and by helping them to learn about art and artists. There's several books I'd like to share that are really good for inspiration, for sparking creativity, by seeing what other artists have created. One of these, well, it's actually a set of books by Sabrina Hahn and it's The 123's of Art and the ABCs of Art. And she has some other books along those lines as well. But these two are just really wonderful. They show classic works of art, the ones through the alphabet. You know, they look at something in the painting that is used for the word in the alphabet. It shows the painting on the next page. And then there's a little paint pallet guy, character who asks a question on each page. So talking about sparking conversations, it's right there in the book for you. Those are The 123's of Art and The ABCs of Art.

Then we have so many books about the Nutcracker. And since this is getting close to Christmas, I thought it would be fun to mention those. But one in particular is The Nutcracker Comes to America by Chris Barton. And it's The Nutcracker Comes to America: How Three Ballet-Loving Brothers Created a Holiday Tradition. And it tells the story of the very first performance of the Nutcracker in the U S and has a lot of historical information about that first performance and about the Nutcracker in general. And so that's kind of cool. And then, like I said, there are so many other books that are just about the Nutcracker story itself. The Nutcracker in Harlem is one about a performance done during the twenties. When we had the Harlem Renaissance.

Then there's a book called Ludwig Von Beethoven by Mike Venezia. It's a series of books called Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers. And so there's one on Beethoven, went on Bach one on Mozart and others. What's so great about this book. The drawings are cartoonish and fun for the child. It uses some humor in the illustrations. And there's lots of little bits of information, maps, timelines, kind of trivia information besides telling the biography of the composer. And I've shared this one before Author, A True Story by Helen Lester. And it's such a cute, funny book that I just love. And it's her story of becoming an author. And then there's Before They Were Authors: Famous Writers as Kids. And this takes several writers and tells about their whole life story. And I love it because it includes several of my favorite authors in it that made it when I had to have it includes CS Lewis, Sandra Cisneros, Maya Angelo, Roald Dahl, Mark Twain, dr. Seuss Beatrix Potter. There's just so many great writers in this book. It has kind of a graphic novel look to it. And it carries you through the timeline of the person's life from being a child to a writer. It's just very well done. This is geared for 3rd through 5th graders, ages 10 and up. Then there's one called Great Art in 30 Seconds: 30 Awesome Art Topics for Curious Kids. It could be used in homeschooling. It has interesting ideas and fun pages and fun bits of information so that the chapters in this book are:

What Makes Great Art--What Is Art and Why Does It Matter? Why is it valuable?

Early Art--Prehistoric Art, Ancient, Egyptian Ancient, Greek Art,

Ancient Roman Art, and Aztec Art.

The Renaissance--The Renaissance to Rococo

The Neoclassicism to Post-Impressionism

Modern Art

Contemporary Art

Don't think it's a really dry book. It's like it said "in 30 seconds or less." So each topic is like a page-long. It has lots of glossary words; it's handled in snippets, short amounts of information, chocked full of information. And then it has a sum-up and a three-minute mission that gives what you need for the different activities. So, each section has activities for the children to do so it's really cleverly done. And it's a really nice book.

There's this book called Flights of Fancy: Creative Inspiration from 10 Award-Winning Authors and Illustrators. It has various authors and it's about cause each, each author wrote their own section. They are different laureates from recent years. It explains all about what they do, their method of illustrating, of getting inspiration. And each one gives their ideas and their life lessons in their art lessons writing, illustrating lessons. It's just a really neat hands-on book and introduces children to some authors. They may not remember their names as much, but they'll remember their writing. They each have their point that they want to make and share with the child. And so there's quite a few different writers, 20 ideas for creative projects, and more about the laureates. And it's just really got a lot of information. This would be a really neat book to have in your library.

And then I don't know if you know about the Fan brothers, Terry Fan and Eric Fan. They're both author-illustrators, and they have beautiful illustrations in their books. I watched an interview with them. If you have Kindle Freetime Unlimited for your kids, this particular book is in that section. It's called The Night Gardener. And this one is not your usual kind of art. This is talking about topiaries, but it has a magical feel to it. But what's cool about it, too, is as you're doing that, you can even talk about the Fans, the two brothers, who have really mastered their art and have used it to create fantastic children's books. And this one is actually about their dad, because he would always shape the trees and make topiaries. Now it's an exaggeration of that. It's definitely hyperbole in this book, but it's really a great book and really well done. So that is called The Night Gardener by Terry and Eric fan.

Another cute book that celebrates creation and God's love for us and how he shows through general revelation through nature that He does love us is a book called This I Know: Seeing God in the World He Made by Clay Anderson and illustrated by Natalie Merheb. And in this book, this little girl goes through her day and talks about all the nature she sees, all the things she sees. "Jesus loves me this I know for the butterflies tell me so," "for the sunrise tells me so," and it's really cute because it's celebrating God's creation and pointing to the fact that he has revealed himself to the world through His creation. And the whole world tells us that Jesus loves us. It's just a really cute book. If you want to start maybe a unit on art with a book like this, to say, you know, God created all things through creating us in His image. He's created us to be creative, then go into art. I think that's just the best way to go into art classes.

Now there are several more books I want to share, which I know is a lot, but these are fulfilling a different purpose. The first ones are practical art books--some that you can use to help let your kids practice drawing, to practice some different art. And so, depending on what their age is and what they're interested is, here are a few you may want to check out. Now, one is called Blank Comic Book for Kids, and it's where you create your own comic book. You open it up, and it's just a blank journal with different boxes and things drawn so that a child could then draw in their own cartoons.

One of the important skills a preschooler needs to learn is scissor skills. And so any book you can find with scissor skills in it is excellent because it helps with their writing. It helps with their reading, and it helps with their coordination. Scissor skills are really basic and important. This particular book is from Modern Kid Press, and it's called Scissor Skills Preschool Workbook for Kids: A Fun Cutting Practice Activity Book for Toddlers and Kids Ages Three to Five.

We cannot have a book list about art and kids drawing without mentioning Ed Emberley. He has many books about drawing and it simplifies the pictures down to shapes and squiggles and makes drawing really accessible to just about any student, regardless of their ability or their past experience with drawing one book in particular, his Drawing Book of Animals. And it has all the different animals. It's one of my favorites. And again, that's by ed in Burley. So any of his books are really good. There's some where he uses fingerprints to draw different things. And then there's one called Create This Book by Mariah Elizabeth and you. And it's a blank book with writing prompts on each page and even places to draw in all kinds of things on it. You get to color the cover of the book even. And so it's a lot of fun. It's just a totally interactive book.

And two more books. These are for moms and dads. The book is Called To Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create Innovate and Risk by Jordan Raynor. And this is a fun book for us to read as parents, not about our children, but just for our own growth in the Lord and discipleship to understand that God has a plan for us and how he can use us. In his book he says, and this is in the first, I think this is actually still in the intro to the book, "The great theologian, Jonathan Edwards once said, 'What God aimed at in the creation of the world as the end, which he had ultimately in view was that communication of himself, which he intended through all eternity.'" And that's a quote from Edwards. And then Raynor says, "If God is the source of all goodness, then revealing himself and his character to us is one of the most loving things he could do. So God appears to have created for the good of others by revealing his character, but Genesis hints at a second way, in which the first entrepreneur loved others through his creating in Genesis 1:26, we find the word 'our' for the first time in scripture, indicating that the God of the Bible is a triune God composed of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Before God brought the world into being, the Trinity had been enjoying perfect community, submitting to each other, loving each other, and serving each other for all eternity. Jesus' prayer prior to his crucifixion gives us beautiful insight into the Trinity's relationship. Jesus looked toward heaven and prayed 'Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify You, for You granted Him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those You have given Him. Now, this is eternal life that they know you. The only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." In this, He talks about who God is in his creative nature, but then he helps us to recognize our work, whatever God has for us to do--our vocation or any other ministry or work is a calling that God has called us to--motivates us to be creative and to want to create and teach us how to create in whatever setting he has put us.

And then another one that I have mentioned before that I would, again, like to recommend is Emily P. Freeman's A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live. It's just so inspirational. I just highly recommend it, but these are some that we can use that we can read to inspire us. And then we can help then hopefully to inspire our children, to be creative, to use the arts, to breasts, the love they have for God that God gave, gave them that ability. And when we look at Ephesians 2:10 in the Amplified Bible: "For, we are his workmanship, his own masterwork, a work of art created in Christ. Jesus." I love the, that verse and I love how we can encourage our children, that God has created them and shaped them and has a plan for them. And he has prearranged those things he wants for us to do, and he will enable us to accomplish them if we will trust him. Thank you for joining us today for books that spark a podcast, celebrating books, that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations and wonderful creative activities with the children in your life. Remember to check out my website, TerrieHellardBrown.com. And when you sign up for my mailing list, you get several free items as well. And right now we also have the advent calendar you can download that has a book a day to read with your children through this holiday season.

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials.

Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.

Her blog posts are published each Thursday and discuss living as a disciple of Christ while discipling our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ.

For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on "the spectrum"), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.

Her motto is "Growing older is inevitable; growing up is optional" and keeps her childlike joy by writing children's stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.

Disclaimer: Although Terrie majored in psychology and sociology for her bachelor's degree and has taught AP Psychology, she is NOT a licensed therapist. She sometimes mentions items in her blog and podcast that could be considered comments on psychology, but these comments are based on ministry experience and ministering to people through the missions and church work she's done for the past 36 years. If you have questions about psychological disorders or counseling needs, please consider finding a reputable, licensed counselor in your area. Terrie's comments should be seen as anecdotal and ministry-experience-related or scripture-based. Thank you!

In this episode we discuss helping children appreciate and enjoy their names, others' names, and the names of God.

Books Discussed in This Episode:

Transcript:

Welcome to "Books that Spark" a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids.

Today I'm so excited to share with you some really sweet books about names and how God knows our name and the meaning of names and the importance of our name. The first book is a fun book that I have loved for years. And it's called Mommy Doesn't Know My Name by Suzanne Williams illustrated by Andrew Shachat. So it's a cute book about how we use pet names with our kids. It starts out, "My mommy doesn't know my name. When I wake up in the morning, she comes in to get me. 'Is That my little chickadee?' She says. I'm not a chickadee. I'm Hannah. After I'm dressed, we have breakfast. My cup slips, and I spill orange juice. 'Oh No!' I cry. 'It's Okay, Pumpkin,' says Mommy. 'Accidents Happen to everyone.' Do accidents happen to pumpkins?" And she says, "I'm not a pumpkin. I'm Hannah." And so it goes through the whole book with all these different names that her mom calls her throughout the day. And as she's going to bed that night she has one more time that her mom calls her a little mouse and she says, "I'm not a mouse. I'm Hannah." And she says, "'Yes, I know,' says, mommy. She gives me a hug. 'Your Hannah, my very own happy little, funny little girl.'" And I just love this book. I think it is so cute and such a sweet book to share with our kids. And I think it would cause a lot of giggles and laughter as you share it together.

Another very sweet book is called Your Name Is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow. This book deals with the different names that people have, especially from different ethnicities and how sometimes those are hard for us to say and encourages a positive outlook on it--that the name is a song. It's beautiful, and it has its own rhythm and its own meaning. So this little girl takes time to learn people's names. And her mom teaches her instead of being upset about her name and the teacher having trouble pronouncing it, to help the teacher pronounce it correctly. And then also to learn her friend's names and to kind of sing their names because the name is a song. And so it's just a really wonderful book. I really appreciate the message in it to be patient with each other. First of all, when we mispronounce names or don't know quite how to pronounce them and to also encourage children to not be embarrassed by their names if people mispronounce them or tease them about them, but to embrace our names that we've been given and to understand the importance of those names and that they are beautiful. My Chinese name, my mom has always said was it doesn't sound pretty in English, you know, to an English ear. But to any Chinese speaking person, they always say, "Oh, what a beautiful name?" I think that's so interesting because our ears are used to hearing names a certain way, sounds a certain way. And we have to learn to understand in other cultures and in other languages, the names are beautiful to the ears of the people, and we need to help each other learn that everyone's name is beautiful.

And then Debbie Anderson has a very cute book: God Knows My Name. And this little book talks about how God knew us before we were born, that he created us and that he's the God of the universe. And yet he knows our name. The illustrations are colorful and cute. And it's just a lovely little book. And there's also a pamphlet that you can get--a pamphlet version of the book, which is nice because you could get a pack of 25, and it shares the gospel in this same way--God knows my name. So in this book it says, "God made everything and God knows everything. God knows me. He even knows my favorite color. What's your favorite color? Surprise. God already knew it. God knows my name. He even knows how many hairs are on my head. Can you count how many hairs are on your head? What is your name?" And it gives scripture to go with each one of these. "Before God made the world, he knew about me. Before I was born, God knew what would happen every day of my life." It's just a cute little book and shares the gospel and how God has known us before we were born.

Another book that's really cute about names is Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. And this is a cute story of a little girl who loves her name thinks that it's just perfect until she goes to school, and the children tease her about her name. She goes through a terrible time, and she doesn't think her name is perfect. She thinks it's dreadful. And then her parents talk to her when she gets home, and she likes her name again a little bit, and it goes back and forth. And then finally the music teacher helps the students to understand that her name is great, and all names are great. And the kids decide to take on flower names themselves. And so they change their names to flowers, but it's a cute little story and a good one, especially if your child is having a hard time with what kids are saying at school, if they're teasing them about their name.

So these two books are really good for those purposes and to help a child embrace the name that they've been given. And another one along these lines, and I think I've mentioned this in another episode, is The Name Jar by Yongsook Choi. And this one is about a Korean girl who comes to school, and everyone always mispronounces her name. So she's going to let them choose a name for her. And so there's a name jar, and they can put names in the jar, and she's going to choose one. And of course she winds up keeping her Korean name because when the children realize what her name means, they think it's just a lovely name. So I love that book too. It's really cute.

I love this next book. It's called The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig and illustrated by Patrice Barton. And it's not exactly about a person's name, but it is about a child who's invisible to everyone else in the class because you have the child that's always complaining and gets all the attention and you have the child, whose the star of everything. And he gets all the attention. This little boy is invisible. His name is Brian. He's always the last one to be picked for a game, if he's picked at all. He's not included in anything. And so it's like no one sees him. He feels invisible. And Brian loves to draw. He draws all kinds of pictures, and it's just really cute. A new boy comes to class named Justin, and he's Korean. Everyone's making fun of his food. He has bulgogi for lunch. And everyone's like, Ooh, that sounds terrible. And Brian writes him a note and says, I thought the bulgogi sounded good. And so that made Justin aware of Brian. Then when they go to have an activity in class or play on the playground, Justin starts including Brian. That makes all the difference because now Brian isn't invisible anymore. And even in the pictures in the book, all of a sudden we start seeing through the whole first part of the book, Brian is black and white. He's kind of a shadow where all the other kids are in color. And then on the page where Justin starts including him, he starts to gain some color. And then for the rest of the book, he's the same color as everybody else. He has full color clothing and everything. And then they do a project and Justin's like, "Oh, I bet Brian could draw the pictures." And they do one of the best little presentations together using their gifts and their abilities. And it's just a really cute book about how on both sides of it. And I think that's why I like this so much. He feels invisible, but he takes the time to encourage someone, and that makes him visible to that person. So sometimes a shy child feels helpless and feels like they can't change their situation. I think if we can help them understand that they can be proactive to help change their situation by encouraging people and being a positive, optimistic person just in their attitude and what they say to others--if they encourage others, if they are friendly to someone else, then chances are that person's going to be friendly back to them. And it's not a hundred percent, but it is a better chance of them being friendly rather than ignoring you, you know, if you're also being an encourager. And so I liked that about it. He helps out with a kid who is feeling teased as well. And so he encourages that child and becomes his friend first when everybody else has given him a hard time. And I like it that then it shows that even if a kid is left out, someone can reach out to them and make a difference. So it shows all sides of the situation and how kids can help each other to feel accepted and part of the group.

Another cute book it's called The Change Your Name Store by Leanne Shirtliffe and illustrated by Tina Kugler. In this story, it's the story of Wilma Lee Wu, who does not like her name at all. She likes everything else in her life, but not her name. And so she finds the Change Your Name Store and goes to town and hunts around and finally finds store and meets the owner Zeena Fouz, the store owner tells her she can choose a name and to choose wisely. And so she chooses her first name and she gets a little card and this is a magic store. So when she chooses that card, it transports her to the land. That name comes from. And so the first name is French that she chooses. And so she winds up at the lube in France and wearing French clothing and she hangs around for a minute, but she really doesn't feel like this is for her. She feels like she's on display, like a painting at the museum. So then she chooses another name and winds up transported to the middle East. And then she winds up choosing a Hispanic name. And so she winds up in all these different countries. And then at long last she finds the perfect name for herself and she is so excited and she takes that card and goes home and tells her family she's found her perfect name. And of course it is Wilma Lee Wu. Because her culture and her name fits her the best because that's who she is.

This one is one I really like. It's called My Name Is Sangoel. And it is written by Karen Williams and Khadra Mohammed and illustrated by Catherine Stock. And it's geared toward first through third graders. It is written about a boy from Sudan and his teacher can never get his name right. He tries to be patient. He tries to be understanding, and his grandfather told him to be patient. And so he's really working hard to be patient, but then he comes up with an idea of how he can help his classmates and his teacher pronounce his name correctly because it's spelled Sangoel. And so his teacher keeps calling him sin go well. And so he draws a sun and a soccer goal on his t-shirt and says, my name is sun goal. And the kids are like, Oh, of course now I get it. I know how to pronounce it. And the children all think it's a wonderful idea to do a Rebus of their names too. And so they get paper in, they each draw a picture of what their name is and how it's pronounced. And I just love that because I think anytime we read a book where a child is solving a problem or making a difference, I think those are powerful, powerful books. That's why I love this because he solves a frustration with intelligence and creativity and ingenuity rather than being angry and just getting upset.

And then one of my favorite stories I've had for years is called Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel and Blair Lent. It is a retelling of an ancient Chinese folktale, and it is so funny. It is such a cute story. It has such a lyrical component to it, with the name of the child in the story. Because, according to this folktale, originally to have an honorable name meant that you had a very long name in Chinese culture. And so the main little boy who's the oldest in the story is Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo. In the story he falls into the well, and so his little brother runs as fast as he can to get his mom. He has such a hard time alerting people to the emergency because he takes so long to say his brother's name that he can't tell them, "Please come quick! He's drowning!" But they do save him finally. And the mother decides it would be wiser to have a shorter name--that short names save lives.

If we're going to talk about names, we have to talk about God's name and understanding what his name means. And there are several books written for children about the names of God. I chose two that I think are really good. One is God, What's Your Name? It's Discover for Yourself Inductive Bible Studies for Kids. And this is for children, 8 to 12 years old, and it's written by Kay Arthur and Janna Arndt. Both of those writers I just think are great. And I love the way the book is set up. It has puzzles and games throughout the book, but it lets the child dig into the word of God and find and understand God's name. And so it's an excellent book for your older children.

And then for your younger children, this one's written for grades one through five and so six to 10 years old, it is called, I Am Devotional: 100 Devotions about the Names of God by Diane M. Stortz. And she has several books about the names of God, and all of them are illustrated by the same illustrator, a French illustrator, Diane Le Feyer. Beautiful illustrations, beautiful books, but this was my favorite of hers, but she has a board book as well that's a good companion book to this one. And she has some other books that deal with other names of God but this one is written really nicely for the younger elementary child. And let me just read a little bit to you. Okay? So this one, it starts out and it has "Hello. My name is," and it says, "God said to Moses, I am who I am. When you go to the people of Israel, tell them I am sent me to you." Exodus 3:14. "At Day camp, or on a field trip you have probably worn a name tag. That way teachers can call you by name. They don't have to yell. 'Hey, You!' When God spoke to Moses at the burning Bush, he wanted Moses to tell the Israelites that God would save them, 'But the people will want to know who sent me,' Moses replied. 'When They ask, what is his name, what should I say to them?' 'I am who I am,' God told Moses. 'That Is my name forever. Tell the people that I am sends you to rescue them and bring them out of Egypt.'" So that's how it starts. It tells more of the story and then it has a place for going deeper and to dig into some other scriptures. What I love, too, is the lessons she teaches throughout this book. Like the second lesson's, "What's in a Name." And it talks about when you know someone's name, well, Psalm 9:10, "Those who know your name, put their trust in you." So when we know God's name, we know we can trust him. Then she talks about not using God's name in vain. And then she talks about some of the other names like creator and Elohim, God of truth, El Emeth, but there's a lot of good discipleship in this. It's not just talking about the name of God. It's what that means to us as followers, as believers in Christ. And I think this would be just a great family Bible study to do together with your kids, or if they want to do it on their own, it would still be great. But I love what she does with the lessons. And they are short lessons. You could go through them fairly quickly as a family, but they're just nicely done. And the other one is much more of a study. So you could use it as a Bible study with older children. You could do it as a small group or Sunday school even. It's really done well to be used where you answer questions and do activities and search into the Bible. Like I said, it's an inductive Bible study. And so both of these are really good. There's some others too, but these were my two favorites of all the ones I looked at. And I think they would be great for helping your children to learn and understand and appreciate the names of God and how through his names, he reveals who he is.

And just a little side note, one of the things I respected so much. This one minister, I knew whenever his kids went out, when they were teenagers and older elementary, when, they would go out to a party or hanging out with friends or whatever, he always said, "Remember your name?" And I thought that was so interesting. They had a family identity. He expected his children to remember their name and that they were part of that family and to live up to what that name stood for. And I thought, how amazing is that to teach our children, that our names matter, and our family identity matters. And who we are as a family is important, and how we represent our family and as well God's family, when we're out. We need to keep in mind that we who we are and not lose sight of who we are when we get around other people. I thought that was such a profound lesson to teach kids. And I've tried to emulate that with my children because I thought it was so good. Not to harass our children and put shame on them. And like, "You better not embarrass me when you're out there." It wasn't that attitude at all. It was more of respect for who you are and to not go against who you are because of what others are doing or saying--to have the strength of character to stand and say, "This is who I am. And I don't want to take part in that." You know, whatever it is that might compromise who you are. Or while you're out to just remember that you are an ambassador of Christ--that you represent him and that you want to let his light shine through you and not our selfish motives and our bad attitudes that we can get at times. And so I think to challenge our kids to think that way, and to challenge ourselves to think that way, I mean, we're supposed to be salt and light. We're supposed to be, you know, glorifying God, making his name known among the people. And we can't do that if we're going against who we are. And we bear the name of Christ. So helping our children understand the importance of their given name, the importance of the name they wear as Christian, is a profound and important lesson we can all learn and we can all teach our kids.

In the past. I've talked about the book Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing by Sally Lloyd Jones, illustrated by Jago. But I wanted to read an excerpt from this book to you. And this is found on page 145 in the book. It's called "Mighty Man of Valor." "The angel said, 'The Lord is with you, Oh, mighty man of valor.' Judges 6:12. Who is this fearsome warrior? The angel is talking to? See that puny weakling hiding over there in the wine press? 'He's The man for the job,' God said. Gideon, the smallest son, of the smallest family, of the smallest tribe of Israel. Why on earth would God choose him and call him 'mighty' when he was nothing of the sort? But God called Gideon by his true name, and Gideon became what God knew he was all along--mighty! Because God sees not just who you are, but who he is going to make you." And I love this so much, especially as we're talking about names, to talk about how God has names he calls us. And we know in the Bible, there are times when he has called people and actually changed their name, like Jacob to Israel and Saul to Paul. But he also has called us many names throughout the Bible, as the church and as followers of Christ, we are the bride of Christ. We are the branches on the vine. We are light and salt. And what do all these names mean when God shares his name with us, it reveals his character. It reveals who he is. And so these names that he has called us reveal who we are and who we're supposed to be in him. And so we can bless our children as we pray for them. And we see what God is doing in their life and what he is building in their life. We can see what God is doing in their character and who he's creating them to be--someone who is loving and patient, someone who is an encourager at heart and a peacemaker. And we can also see that in our own lives--what is God building in our lives? What name is he calling us? How can we walk in that?

Thank you for joining us today for "Books that Spark," a podcast celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Remember to check out my website, TerrieHellardBrown.com. And when you sign up for my mailing list, you get several free items. And right now we also have an Advent calendar you can download that has a book a day, actually through November and December, but an Advent calendar that has Christmas books you can read all through the holiday season, and, for November, books on Thanksgiving and on thankfulness that you can share with your family. You can download that for free. It'll be in the show notes, and it is on my website.

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials.

Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.

Her blog posts are published each Thursday and discuss living as a disciple of Christ while discipling our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ.

For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on "the spectrum"), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.

Her motto is "Growing older is inevitable; growing up is optional" and keeps her childlike joy by writing children's stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.

Disclaimer: Although Terrie majored in psychology and sociology for her bachelor's degree and has taught AP Psychology, she is NOT a licensed therapist. She sometimes mentions items in her blog and podcast that could be considered comments on psychology, but these comments are based on ministry experience and ministering to people through the missions and church work she's done for the past 36 years. If you have questions about psychological disorders or counseling needs, please consider finding a reputable, licensed counselor in your area. Terrie's comments should be seen as anecdotal and ministry-experience-related or scripture-based. Thank you!

In this episode we look at books about the history of Thanksgiving, the traditions of today's Thanksgiving, and building an attitude of gratitude in our families.

Books Discussed in This Episode

Transcript:

Welcome to "Books that Spark," a podcast for parents and caregivers celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids.

Today, we're going to look at books that go with Thanksgiving. And since this is the beginning of November, I thought we could take time to talk about books of Thanksgiving, so you have time to get them if you want to read them for the Thanksgiving holiday. First, let's look at some great books--picture books and story books--about the history of the American Thanksgiving. I want to share some books with you that I just have loved over the years. I love Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday because of the family time we have together and the being thankful, helping our kids to understand the importance of Thanksgiving, of being thankful for what God has provided for us. I think teaching our children to be thankful is one of the most powerful things we can teach them. It helps them to be grateful for what they have and to look at the blessings in their lives, even when going through hard times. And so I think as parents, we really have the responsibility to help them understand the power and the importance of being grateful.

And part of that with Thanksgiving is also the history. And I know that some today would rather us change the history or not talk about what happened back then, but history is history, and we learn from history when we teach what history really was all about. I think it's also important to help children see things from another person's perspective, and part of that is understanding that the mindset back then, right or wrong, was what it was. I think sometimes we vilify historical figures because we're judging them from a 21st century perspective. And we have to help our children understand that their attitudes were different. Their understanding was different. I mean, even Mark Twain--his family owned slaves, and it wasn't until he met his wife. From what I understand of the history, he met his wife and she was an abolitionist. She was from Connecticut. She did not agree that slavery was okay. Well, for Mark Twain, he had never even thought about it. It was just a way of life in his family at that time. And in his culture where he grew up and sad and as horrible and evil as it was, he had no other understanding. And so then when he was exposed to this other way of thinking, he started realizing this isn't right. And you see it in his writing of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There's one line, my favorite line in the whole book--I feel like it is the climactic line, the turning point for Huck Finn's understanding--is when he realizes that Jim is a person; he realizes he has pain from missing his family and regrets for the way he treated his daughter. And he sees him for the first time as a human being. And to me, that is so powerful. And we know that Mark Twain changed his viewpoint. He changed his attitude about slavery once he was exposed to the other way of thinking.

So what we need to do is when we study history and we see these attitudes that today we find appalling and of course would never want our children to think slavery was okay, or to think that it's okay to go and just take over someone else's land. So when we teach our children, we need to help them understand that we learn from history. We learn from the mistakes of the past; we help our kids to understand the thinking that was prevalent back then, why they did what they did, and then, was it right? Would it be right for us to do that today, and help them to think through these things. We want to raise thinkers. We want to raise people who can reason and debate and think through, and not just accept everything that they're fed at face value.

We have a foundation of character traits and biblical teaching of the truth of what is right and wrong. What is good and bad. And we live our lives. According to that, we want to help our children to embrace those values as well. And to understand how to then look at whatever situation they face and understand how to navigate the complexity of life as they live it out. If we just jump on a bandwagon without really examining what the people are teaching and what their foundational ideas are, why they did what they did, the motivation behind what's going on, we wind up just being blind followers who buy into whatever sounds good at the moment. It's a recipe for disaster in many situations. So I think when we're talking about Thanksgiving, we need to help our children have a wider view and understand what was going on at the time and what the thinking was at the time.

Okay. So I'll give you a really quick little history lesson. And if you remember your history, the Puritans were the Protestants who pulled away from the Church of England because they wanted to live a life, a simple life, following the Bible and not following the church of England. And so they were being persecuted, and they had gone to Holland to try to find freedom, but their civil rights were also hindered. And they didn't like what was being taught in that culture. They felt that it was wrong, and it was against what they believed and that their children were growing up in that culture. So they decided they needed to go to the New World.

So that's what's behind the Pilgrims. And of course, pilgrim means traveler, usually a religious traveler going somewhere because of their faith. And usually we talk about pilgrimages going to a Holy site, but in this case, the Pilgrims were going to find religious freedom in the new world. That is a part of our heritage here in the United States. So through talking about the history of Thanksgiving, I feel like we can focus on civil rights. We can talk about the heritage that we have as a result. We can talk about religious persecution. And then, of course, we want to talk about thankfulness. So this month, for sure, we want to talk about Thanksgiving and being thankful and the power of being thankful. It changes your whole outlook on life. So let me share a few fun books with you.

Now, some of these, you know, me, I have books that I have kept for years. And so some of these, if you wanted to buy them, you would have to buy a used copy, probably, because they are so old, but I've hung onto them because they're so great. I just love them. Okay. So one of the books, and you can still get this one, even though it is quite old is The First Thanksgiving Feast by Joan Anderson. And it's got photographs by George Ancona. And this is where there are several books I like that are from the reenactment of the Pilgrim's life in the Plymouth Plantation today, which is like a living museum where you can see how they lived their lives. And so this is one of those. So everything in this book is a photograph taken from the reenactment of the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth Plantation, along the same lines. We have Samuel Eaton's Day; A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy by Kate Waters, photographs by Russ Kendall. And this is at the Plymouth Plantation. It goes through the process of what they wore and how they would go through their day and what responsibilities a young boy would have in that day and time. And so it's very eye-opening for our students, for our children to see all that this little boy would have to do. I mean, just reading it makes you tired. Same with the one that's about Tapenum's Day: A Wampanoag Indian Boy in Pilgrim Times. And again, this one is also with photographs from the living museum of the Plymouth Plantation. And in addition to those two, we have Sarah Morton's Day. These are all by Kate waters. The photography is by Russ Kendall, and they are all from the Plymouth Plantation. And so it takes you through a typical day for a young boy, Samuel Eaton, or Tapenum, who is one of the native American child, and then Sarah Morton. One of my favorite parts of the Sarah Morton's Day is just looking at how she had to get dressed, the layers and layers and layers she had to put on every day. And, you know, we complain when we're uncomfortable in our clothing. I just get the sense that there was very little comfort in their life. Everything was hard. Work, expectations were high on each of these young children to fulfill their responsibilities. And it was just the life they were used to. But if we imagined ourselves in that situation, our kids would probably cry. These are excellent books, excellent resources for helping our children to see what the life was like during that time. And then we have one by these same two people, Kate Waters and Russ Kendall On the Mayflower: Voyage of the Ship Apprentice and a Passenger Girl. So this is taking a look at what life would have been like actually on the Mayflower, as it is reenacted as a living museum as well. Same thing with the photographs of the different people, portraying life on the Mayflower. If you go to Plymouth today, of course, you can see the replica of the Mayflower that they have anchored at the shore there in Plymouth, near Plymouth Plantation. And you can go to Plymouth Plantation and see the living museum. But even if you don't do that, just going to Plymouth and touring all the different shops is cool. My husband's family has a museum there, a real small museum, at the Harlow House because that's some of his family's heritage. And so it's really eye-opening and a lot of fun to see the culture from that time, the history that has been preserved. If you go to the Harlow House, it's a small museum. Mr. Harlow didn't come over on the Mayflower. He came right after in one of the groups that came over, but he was a Coopersmith. So he built barrels for supplies and stuff like that. But if you go to that museum, they let you weave. They let you try some of the different skills that these children would have done on a daily basis, that they would have learned and known how to do. And so that was a lot of fun for my kids to get to do that.

Another book that I really love is called Three Young Pilgrims by Cheryl Harness. And it is based on three real children who came over on the Mayflower. It talks about the life of that time. The pictures in here, I just love the pictures. They're very detailed. They show a lot of information and they label the parts of the ship. It's a very wonderful educational book that if you can get a copy of it, I've hung onto it for years, because it is so full of great information about life back then. And what happened to some of the people who came over on the Mayflower. If you remember your history, half the people died either coming over or during that first winter when they arrived here because they arrived much later than they planned. And so life was very difficult and these children lost their mother.

Then we have some books that are a lot of fun. This one was from 91, so it's still kind of old. If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620, and this book, it takes you through what life was like on the Mayflower. It tells the history of why they left, why they didn't stay, where they were, the details of how many people were on the Mayflower. There was a baby, of course we know, born on the Mayflower, and he was named Oceanus. It talks about what they ate. Just the whole thing of what it was like to be on the Mayflower.

This one, I really like. It's called You Wouldn't Want to Sail on the Mayflower. And this one was from 2013, so still it's not brand new or anything, but it's written by Peter Cook and illustrated by Kevin Whelan. And it's just a fun, crazy look at the Mayflower and what life would have been like. And I just liked that they titled it You Wouldn't Want To, and they have several in that series of You Wouldn't Want To books. And, of course, we have Horrible Histories as well, that I've mentioned before, that appeal more to the middle-schooler and your sixth graders through middle school and even into high school. There's a lot of great books you can look at for history.

Then we have just fun children's stories that you can get for your kids that talk about life back then and what they went through that are told from a different perspective. For instance, we have one that is called Pilgrim Cat written by Carol Antoinette Peacock and illustrated by Doris Ettlinger. The illustrations are really nice. The story is told from the perspective of a little girl's experience with the cat on the ship. The writer found out that there were cats that did come across on the Mayflower with the Pilgrims. And so she made up this fictional story about little Faith, a little Pilgrim girl who was on the Mayflower, befriending this little cat, she named Pounce. And it is just an adorable little story. And again, it covers all the history of the Pilgrims' first year, their travels on the Mayflower, and also their encounter with Squanto and the different Indian tribes, as well as the first Thanksgiving.

Now, when we talk about Thanksgiving, there are many books about Squanto. And one of the ones that I have is Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving by Eric Metaxas. And it is a really great retelling of his story. He is, his life was so fascinating. He was one of those people who learned to persevere, to forgive, to continue on, and make the best of whatever life brought his way. He was taken into slavery. Then he went to England and learned English. He, my understanding is, he became a believer in Christ, and he came back home to find that his whole tribe had died from a disease, I think smallpox, that had been introduced by different explorers. He was the only one of his tribe left. And so he came and lived among the Wampanoags and the other Indian tribes in that area. And he also helped the Pilgrims to communicate with the local tribes. If it weren't for Squanto, we probably wouldn't have the same story we have of Thanksgiving, because it would have been much more difficult for the Pilgrims to communicate with the Native Americans. He also taught them how to plant and how to put fish in the ground to help fertilize the ground so that the corn would grow. He introduced them to growing corn. So Squanto really was a catalyst in the Pilgrims' lives to help them survive in America. It's sad all he went through, but it's wonderful to see how God redeemed the situation and used his life in such a profound way.

Now let's look at some books that celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving and the traditions we celebrate today during the fall months. During the Thanksgiving holiday, we always try to invite someone who's new to our country, either an international student or an international person who's working in our area that this is their first Thanksgiving. We try to share that with them in our family here in California, we typically get together at my aunt's house, and there will be over 20 people at our Thanksgiving. And it is a wonderful feast and a wonderful time of fellowship. And we love bringing people into that time and showing them what an American Thanksgiving is like today.

There's some really cute little story books, of course, about being thankful. One of them is called I Am Thankful: A Thanksgiving Book for Kids by Sherri Wall, illustrations by Holly Clifton-Brown. And this is a cute story. It says "The calendar says November is here. The leaves do a dance. Fall colors appear. Family and friends with grins ear to ear will gather together. Thanksgiving is near." And so it shows different families getting together for the holiday and shows the American Thanksgiving basically, and the children are helping get ready for Thanksgiving. They help grandma go shopping. They help mom clean the house. And then it says, "I am thankful. My heart grows. Love fills me from head to toes. We load into cars and drive many miles. The patch is so full of long pumpkin aisles. I climb in the wagon and sit on hay seats. The farmer's lips whistle as he drives through the streets." And so it shares the experience of going to a pumpkin patch and taking a hayride and making the different Thanksgiving treats. And I just love it because it shows so much of the culture of what we do at Thanksgiving and the different family activities that we take part in typically during this time of the year. And so it's just a really cute book, but it comes back to always, "I am thankful; my heart grows. Love, fills me from head to toes." And that's repeated through the book on different sections as they do the different activities. So I really liked that. And then it ends with, "Here are some ways you can show you are thankful: make an 'I am thankful' poster." And so it shows different things you can do as activities as a family. "Draw And pass out thank you cards. Make your own thankful turkey placemats. Make a family thankfulness tree. Play the thankfulness countdown." And it outlines all of those. So it's just an adorable little book that I think celebrates what Thanksgiving today is all about.

A fun and silly book that just really drives home the modern day Thanksgiving and what Thanksgiving is really all about is Thanksgiving at the Tappletons' and this one's by Eileen Spinelli and illustrated by Maryann Cocca-Leffler. I don't think I had this on the calendar for your, for the readings, but it's a great book to pick up and read for Thanksgiving. So you might want to add it to your list.

I love Glenys Nellist's book Snuggle Time Fall Blessings. If you haven't read that little board book, it's wonderful, and it's a rhyming book. That is another one that would be a lot of fun to read with your kids. And it celebrates all the different activities we do during this time of the year: bonfires, pumpkin patches, and those different activities.

Finally, let's look at books about having a heart of gratitude. There are some very sweet books out there that can help us help our children learn to be thankful. A couple of special books I found on gratitude: One is simply the lyrics to the song that was recorded by Art Garfunkel. It's called Grateful: a Song of Giving Thanks. And it's by John Bucchino and illustrated by Anna-Liisa Hakkarainen. And this is just a sweet book. If you've ever read the lyrics to the song Grateful by art Garfunkel, it is just such a nice song lyric. And then the illustrations just bring the song to life. It's a very sweet book.

Another very sweet book is Look and Be Grateful by Tomie de Paola. And he, you probably know, is a wonderful children's book illustrator and children's author. His books are very simple word-wise. It's mostly the pictures that tell the story. This is just a lovely, lovely book.

And then another very sweet book is called. Thank You God, by Jay Bradley Wigger and illustrated by Jago, one of my favorite illustrators that I just love. And this book is a very heartwarming Christian book that just has you stop and look around and be thankful for all that God has given us.

Then we have another book, and it's called God Gave Us Thankful Hearts by Lisa Tawn Bergren and the art is by David Hohn. And it says, well, there you are a little wolf puppy. "Mama Said, 'Why are you looking so glum?' 'I don't know,' He mumbled I'm just sad.'" And so the mama says, "How can you be sad on such a beautiful day? Because the leaves are changing colors and soon it will be winter." "I like spring, summer and fall when I can play with all my friends. Hibernatin' season is boring." "You'll still have some friends about come winter. And there's a reason for us to be thankful in every season, little pup. We need winter to let the land, and some of your friends, have a rest. Otherwise we wouldn't get spring." And it shows the bears--they're going to go take a nap, and the birds flying South. "But Everyone is going to be hibernatin'." And he grumbled "The chipmunks and bears, the badgers and bats. Even the raccoons, beavers and squirrels won't come out much." "'What about the skunks and bees? You won't see much of them, either,' Mama said. Little pup smiled. I guess I could be thankful about that." And it shows all the different animals going to go take a nap. It says, "We can be thankful for how God paints our forest every autumn,' Mama said. 'Yeah, But I'm not thankful for poison Ivy,' Little Pup said remembering the time he rolled in a patch by accident. 'It Makes you so itchy.' 'True, but you can be thankful you know how to avoid it now. Right?' 'I guess.'" So she's working to try to help him find ways to be thankful in helping him to think of things, and he's just in a grumpy mood. But I think it's a really cute little story that would be great to read with your kids, especially if they're kind of grumpy and not feeling thankful--to help them think about being thankful.

There are quite a few board books and picture books that have to do with being thankful. I sent out an email to my mailing list about the thankfulness and advent calendars that I created for November and December. If you haven't downloaded that yet, I'll put the link in the show notes, but I have created a calendar with a book a day for you to read for the months of November and December. And if you're getting a late start, don't worry about it. That's not a problem, but it should give you some great ideas to talk to your librarian about, to get from your local library, or if you want to buy some special books for your children to share each year during the holiday season, these are some suggestions I have. There are so many books about these two topics, as you can imagine, since these are the biggest holidays in America. Many books have been written about Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I tried to find some that I thought would really bless you and your family. And I also added some notes at the bottom of each calendar for board books for your very young readers.

Thank you for joining us for books that spark a podcast, celebrating books, that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life.

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials.

Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.

Her blog posts are published each Thursday and discuss living as a disciple of Christ while discipling our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ.

For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on "the spectrum"), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.

Her motto is "Growing older is inevitable; growing up is optional" and keeps her childlike joy by writing children's stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.

Disclaimer: Although Terrie majored in psychology and sociology for her bachelor's degree and has taught AP Psychology, she is NOT a licensed therapist. She sometimes mentions items in her blog and podcast that could be considered comments on psychology, but these comments are based on ministry experience and ministering to people through the missions and church work she's done for the past 36 years. If you have questions about psychological disorders or counseling needs, please consider finding a reputable, licensed counselor in your area. Terrie's comments should be seen as anecdotal and ministry-experience-related or scripture-based. Thank you!

Transcript:

Welcome to "Books that Spark," a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids.

Today, I'm going to be talking about sign language, being deaf, and some wonderful books that have to do with this subject. For some reason, this has just been on my heart to talk about. I think my heart and my mind have been thinking a lot about ministry and what we can do with our kids in ministry and how we can help them to have a heart for ministering to others. And I've always loved sign language. My great grandparents were deaf. I did not know them, but because of that, my family has always known a little bit of sign language. So, I've always wanted to learn more, and I've taken some sign language classes and have done a little bit of signing in ministry, but I have loved every minute of it. It has been such a blessing to try to communicate and to try to be a catalyst to help bridge the communication gap. Whether I'm dealing with second language learners or someone who is deaf, I like being that bridge to bridge the gap in communication and getting the word of God into the hands of whomever God brings into my life. This is something that I've just always loved. And I think the language is so beautiful and visual. I love learning that. And, of course, we have found with autism and even with very young children, teaching them sign enables them to communicate easier and earlier in life.

So, let's talk a little bit about some really wonderful books. And one is an older book, but it's called I Have a Sister. My Sister Is Deaf, and it's by Jeanne Whitehouse Peterson illustrated by Deborah Kogan Ray. And it's this sister telling about her little sister who is deaf and what her daily experiences are like. But what I love about it is not only does it help a child to understand what it might be like to be deaf and then how to be able to respect and help someone or be sensitive to someone, but to understand what they're going through and what their experience is, which is always a good thing to help our children learn empathy. But it's so beautiful the way she discusses life with her sister. You can sense the love she has for her sister and the joy that she has and happiness that she has in living life with her little sister. For instance, on one of the pages they're sitting at the piano and she says, "My sister can play the piano. She likes to feel the deep rumbling chords, but she will never be able to sing. She cannot hear the tune." I think it just really opens our eyes to what it would be like to not be able to hear. In one picture on one page, she's talking about how she covers her ears and tries to experience what her sister might experience. And this page, I just love. She said, "I understand my sister. My sister understands what I say too. Especially if I speak slowly and move my hands a lot, but it is not only my lips and fingers that my sister watches. I wore my sunglasses yesterday. The frames are very large. The lenses are very black. My sister made me take them off when I spoke. What do my brown eyes say to her brown eyes? That I would really rather play ball than play house? That I just heard our mother call, but I do not want to go in yet?" And so it points out that not only does a deaf person look at our gestures and read our lips or sign language, they look at our expressions and our eyes and they take it all in to communicate.

I used to have a deaf friend and if the phone rang, of course, she couldn't hear it. So it would ring. And, all of a sudden, we all just looked over at the phone, and she's like, "Whoa, what's going on." Instead of the conversation being centered around where we were talking with her, everybody naturally just looked toward the phone, and she figured out, "Oh, the phone must be ringing." It's kind of cool how this book breaks that down and clarifies that for a young reader. So that one is called. I Have a Sister. My Sister Is Deaf.

Another book I really love is by Alan Say. It's called Silent Days, Silent Dreams, and it's the story about an artist named James Castle who was born deaf, nearly blind and also had autism and possibly dyslexia. His story is fascinating. Because he was born in 1899, he didn't have a lot of help, and he taught himself to draw. Most of his life, he was just ridiculed and abused by the children around him and even some of his family members. But eventually, his genius was understood. I love his story so much because it shows the determination of a person who has that gift of art. And they cannot walk away from it, no matter how many people try to keep them from doing it. It shows the determination of someone with disabilities who's trying to reach the outside world and to make his own world in his case, as kind of a reaction to the world around him. We'll never know exactly how he experienced what he went through because he could not speak, but the genius of his work was obvious. And, fortunately, it was realized before he died. And that was acknowledged, I don't know how much he understood of what was acknowledged, but they think that he lived out his last 12 years or so just happy as could be with being able to produce art and everything. But the story is so interesting. I think it would be a wonderful story to add to your collection, especially if you're reading stories about people with disabilities or challenges in their lives. He definitely had more than the average person. And one of the things that I would do if I were reading this book with homeschoolers or with students at school, is--it talks about how, because they took his pencils away; they took ink away from him, and everything else, he had to be creative in being able to draw. And so, he used matches that had been lit and burned out. And he would write with that. He took soot from the chimney, from the fireplace, and then he would add saliva to it and use a stick to draw and to make his pictures. And Alan Say tried all these different methods, so he could see what it was like to draw like James. And he said it was very interesting because if you just use the soot or the matches, the picture won't stay. It'll just smudge away because it isn't fixed. And they didn't have, he, of course, especially did not have something to make the picture adhere to the paper. But in his process of doing this, he learned that saliva makes that stick to the paper and makes the pictures last. And so that was kind of cool. And he found that out trying to imitate James Castle. But this is a beautiful book. It's illustrated amazingly. Of course, all of Alan Say's books are gorgeous, but it's just a wonderful book. And I think the first book I Have a Sister, My Sister Is Deaf, I would say that that would be geared more towards your three to five to seven-year-olds. And then the Allen Say book would be for your little bit older student, but it would still be interesting, I think, even to about a six-year-old or seven-year-old, especially if they're interested in art. But then as I was saying, if I were using this in homeschool or in my classroom, I would give the children an assignment to draw a picture using something unusual. And you might have to specify what is not allowed because some kids would try some really awful things possibly, but give them some ideas and give them some choices. Maybe have them clear their choice with you before they start rummaging through cabinets or whatever or going out in the yard and finding something. But to give children an opportunity to be creative; what would they do if they didn't have a pencil? What would they do if they had to draw a picture, and they didn't have the tools that we normally use to do art? And then the other thing that Castle did was he would cut out used scraps from trash, and he would make little people and little animals, like little puppets, kind of, that they called his friends. He would line up on the wall little animals and things like that. And so it would be fun to use some paper and cardboard and things left in the trash and recycle those to make some little creatures, some little animal puppets or whatever that you could display in your house or in your classroom and let the children be creative that way. It would be a lot of fun to study this, to talk about autism, to talk about deafness, blindness, dyslexia, all of these challenges that he had being mute, where he couldn't ever speak--all of these things and carry that over, extended into a really interesting art lesson. And also you could talk very much about determination and how hard do we try to keep doing what we feel like we're supposed to do, that burning in our heart, that we know God is calling us or has gifted us to do. How hard are we going to push to make that happen when we run into difficulties? We can talk about a lot of good character lessons with this book. So those two books I think are wonderful. And like I said, this one is called Silent Days, Silent Dreams by Alan Say.

Two more people that I think it would be great to get their stories--there's a baseball player who was born deaf, and he had a great impact on the game. His name was William Hoy. The book is The William Hoy's Story by Nancy Churnin and pictures by Jez Tuya. This is another book that would be good. And this is not a chapter book; it's for your early elementary. It's not a picture book, it's an actual storybook. So, it has more words, but it's not a chapter book. And then for a little bit older student, of course, they have to read about Helen Keller. Her life story is so interesting. And there are some books out there that are really nicely done about her life. For children, one of them is The Story of Helen Keller: A Biography Book for New Readers. And it's a chapter book, an early chapter book, so they're not hugely long chapters. This one's by Christine Platt and illustrated by Ana Sanfelippo. It's a nice book, but if your children are old enough, I recommend actually reading The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. I've only read excerpts from it, but everything I've read from that book is so beautifully written. Helen Keller had a really strong gift for imagery and for writing just eloquently. What I love though, if you're teaching a lesson on figurative language or literary devices, and you're talking about imagery, her story is one of the best, ironically. I mean, here she is deaf and blind, and yet her imagery in her story is some of the best I've ever read. And so, it's a wonderful story to use for teaching imagery to your older students. Now, this is definitely a chapter book written for older kids to adult age. So, I wouldn't assign it to your elementary kids. It wouldn't hurt with your middle schoolers to show imagery using this book. And I think it would be okay for a middle schooler to read this as well. And there's one more about Helen Keller that you may want to look at as well. And it is similar to the first one I mentioned. It's called, Who Was Helen Keller by Gary Thompson and illustrated by Nancy Harrison. And this one is a little bit earlier. It has bigger words. Size-Wise bigger words and is geared more towards your first, second grader who's just starting to read chapter books. So that would be a good choice. And then the other one that I mentioned that is a chapter book is still an early chapter book, but it would, you know, it's got more words and smaller words on the pages. So it's for a little bit older student. So those are some ideas of biographies you could read about different people who are deaf.

There are three books that I recommend for children for learning sign language. One of them is called Time to Sign: Sign Language for Kids by Catherine Clay and illustrated by Michael Reed and Margo Lucas. This one is for your second, third grader age range, somewhere in there. It has photographs and pictures of how to do the sign language. It has some pointers in the beginning about how to introduce sign language to your children and to autistic children or whomever. It's really nicely done. And then for your really young children who just want to learn a few words, or if you want to teach them finger spelling: My First Book of Sign Language is a good one. It's been out for a while. It's been out since 2004 by Joan Holub she's the author and illustrator, and it's just a really cute Scholastic book. And so it's nice for introducing sign language and finger spelling.

But my absolute favorite book that I would highly recommend for teaching sign language to children is American Sign Language for Kids: 101 Easy Signs for Nonverbal Communication by Rachelle Barlow. Her story is very interesting. She first learned sign language, not because she had a deaf friend or a deaf family member, but because of the gorilla that learned to sign, and she was fascinated with monkeys and gorillas. And so that was her first interest in sign language. In the book, she took the time to research about ASL--the community, the autistic community, and how you can use sign in both of those settings. She gives pointers that are very easily explained to children. They're written out very clearly of how you act when you're talking to a deaf person, how you should keep eye contact and speak to the deaf person. Even if a translator or interpreter is signing to the person, you still look at the deaf person because that's who you're speaking to. She talks about how you don't talk to your friend who's a hearing person without signing what you are saying in your conversation because it's rude to exclude the deaf person that way. And it'd be like someone whispering in front of us and not letting us know what they're saying. And so, it goes through a lot of the etiquette and how to teach a child to really be able to go into a deaf community and minister and be a part of the community and enjoy the fellowship. So, I love that about it. And then of course it has 101 sign language vocabulary to learn. It's an excellent book. So that one I really like is American Sign Language for Kids: 101 Easy Signs for Nonverbal Communication. And this book is also fairly new. It was published in 2019.

One thing you need to be aware of, if you haven't been in the deaf community or learned sign language, is that there are signs that are regional. So, if you learn sign language on the West Coast of America and or of the US, and you go to the East Coast, there's going to be some signs that are very different. I found that to be the case when I first learned. I learned from an East Coast teacher and then later learned from a West Coast teacher, and having to unlearn and relearn was very hard. And then I also found that when I got around someone who was deaf, just like when I try to practice my Chinese, I get very nervous. And so, we need to practice a lot so that we can get comfortable with the language before we are thrust into a situation where we have to use it. But I will tell you as with just about any other language, if you're trying to do your best and you really genuinely want to communicate, usually people appreciate your efforts and are very kind about it. We do need to be careful that we know the etiquette and understand the culture of the deaf community, because it is different. I'm very well-known for whatever language I'm learning, embarrassing myself in speaking that language. So, you know, I've learned a little Korean sign language. I wanted to learn Chinese sign language, but Oh my goodness, that's harder than learning to speak Chinese. It is so difficult. And so I wasn't able to learn that even though I wanted to, but it is so much fun. And I'm hoping that maybe if you decide to learn sign language with your child, that God might open up a door for ministry, and that you can make connections with the deaf people in your community.

If you are interested in doing ministry in reaching out or starting Bible studies that can minister to the autistic community, the deaf community, or any other group of people who have challenges or limitations, the Disability Ministry Conference of Northern California is a new organization. Last year, they had their very first conference. And, of course, this year, we couldn't have it because of COVID, but they have plans to continue on and to do more in the future (https://www.disabilityministryconference.com/socal-conference#eb-plugin-page-1). But a friend of mine who is involved with that is Diane Kim. And she's written a devotional book for parents of autistic children called Unbroken Faith: Spiritual Recovery for the Special Needs Parent. And her son is autistic, and their church has a wonderful disabilities ministry. And she's also a disability ministry consultant. I'll have a link to her website in the show notes because I think if you're wanting to start a ministry like that, she's a perfect person to contact about doing that. And there's a book. I hadn't intended to talk about this, but since we're on the topic, I'm going to go ahead and recommend one more book for you if you're wanting to do this kind of the ministry, and that is Amy Fenton Lee's book, Leading a Special Needs Ministry: A Practical Guide to Including Children and Loving Families. If we aren't trying to equip our churches to at least reach out somewhat to these families, we need to have a church place that is safe, where they can bring their children and be a part of something that God is doing in their community and be welcomed into the church. And for a lot of these parents too, if they don't have respite care, it can be overwhelming. Especially if a child could hurt themselves. We can offer a place of refuge for them. We can offer a place of safety and acceptance and love and allow that parent to go into a worship service and have that hour where they can focus on God and they can focus on something besides parenting, because it can be a 24-7 job with no break with some of the disabilities that children have to deal with. You know, it's a constant battle and they're exhausted and we can be that place that can minister to them. And we can teach our kids to care and to encourage and to be there for people who are different from them. So I think that's a wonderful thing as we're discipling our children, to help them see us minister to those who have been marginalized, not because society hates them, but because society isn't always equipped to meet their needs. And I know that more and more, we try to do that. So, the church needs to consciously choose to do that. We need to consciously choose to do that whenever that opportunity arises. And if you're teaching a unit on disabilities, one of the best books I've seen on the topic is by Joni and Friends and illustrated by Trish Mahoney. And the forward is by Johnny Erickson, Tada. And it's called God Made Me Unique: Helping Children See Value in Every Person. And this one is listed on my list of 100 books to (more than 100 books) to help start your child's library that you get when you sign up for my mailing list. So, you may have seen it on that list, but this is a wonderful book about how we're all unique. And we all have challenges and we're all uniquely made and blessed by God. And He wants to use our lives. It's beautiful and very encouraging.

I don't know what God has planned. I just know that this was on my heart to share this week. And so, I'm trying to be obedient to that. I pray that God will open doors. I pray that God will use our fascination with whatever language or whatever ministry He puts on our hearts to reach out and to try to help others. Thank you for joining us for Books that Spark, a podcast celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life.

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials.

Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.

Her blog posts are published each Thursday and discuss living as a disciple of Christ while discipling our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ.

For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on "the spectrum"), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.

Her motto is "Growing older is inevitable; growing up is optional" and keeps her childlike joy by writing children's stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.

Disclaimer: Although Terrie majored in psychology and sociology for her bachelor's degree and has taught AP Psychology, she is NOT a licensed therapist. She sometimes mentions items in her blog and podcast that could be considered comments on psychology, but these comments are based on ministry experience and ministering to people through the missions and church work she's done for the past 36 years. If you have questions about psychological disorders or counseling needs, please consider finding a reputable, licensed counselor in your area. Terrie's comments should be seen as anecdotal and ministry-experience-related or scripture-based. Thank you!

In this episode we explore the strength found in joy and empowering our kids to bless others by sharing joy and kindness.

Remember, we have a drawing for a signed copy of Little Mole's Christmas Gift. To enter, comment on this blog post.

Books Discussed in This Episode:

Insanity of God Video

Sheep Among Wolves

IDOP (November 1, 2020)

Transcript:

Welcome to Books that Spark, a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm excited today to talk with you about kindness and joy. I had another episode actually planned for this week, but after interviewing Glenys, I am just overwhelmed by the joy and the kindness that comes through her books. And I feel like with our situation right now, that's something that our kids really need. Not only because it comforts us, but I think we forget that it strengthens us. When we're thinking of helping our children to find joy and to find peace and to be kind to others, we're equipping them to live their lives as a testimony for God in the strength of the Holy spirit, because the fruit of the spirit includes kindness and joy and peace and all of those wonderful attributes that we long for with the very innermost part of our being. And so, I found some really cute books to share with you today about joy and kindness.

The first one is actually called Joy, and it's by Corrinne, Averiss and illustrated by Isabelle Follath. It's a very cute story about a little girl who adores her Nanna. Her name is Fern. Her Nanna has been sad and not full of joy. It's like she's lost her joy. So she wants to try to help her Nanna find joy again. And it really exemplifies encouraging one another. And it exemplifies the Philippians 4:8 verse where it says to think on these things. And it's just an adorable little storybook. And she tries to go out into the world and find joy for her grandma so she can share it with her. And she takes all these little things and it's a British written in British English. So we have mum and she takes a tin instead of a can. And so there's several words in there that are the British English, and it's very sweet and quaint, but anyway, she tries to catch joy. She goes to the park because people are always joyful at the park and she's trying to find joy and get it in her little tin. And, of course, it won't go in the tin. So, she's very disappointed and goes home to her Nanna and tells her, "I tried to find joy to give to you." And she tells her about all the incidents of joy that she saw. One is really cute. It's a dad tickling his little kid's feet on the swing and, you know, just adorable. Anyway, her sharing the experiences she had helps Nanna to smile and to be filled with joy. And so, Nanna gives her a big hug and tells her she's her cause for joy. She's the reason she's joyful again. But I love that it shows that a child can make such a difference just by their attitude and by what they share with others and what they say. And so this is a really cute book called Joy.

And two adorable books that I just came across a few weeks ago, and they are so cute, is Ordinary Mary. There's two books in the series that I know of. Anyway, there may be more, but Ordinary Mary's Positively Extraordinary Day by Emily Pearson and Fumi Kosaka is the illustrator. She goes through her whole day, and it's just an ordinary day. And it shows how the little things we do, again, the little things we do can make a difference in someone's life and can make a difference in the outlook and of what's going on in the day and in the world. And so I love that. And just about, I think all the books I'm sharing with you today pretty much are books about this, where we can teach our children that what they do matters, even if it's just a small kindness or a small word of encouragement, it can make a difference. And then, not only does it help the other person find joy, it helps nourish our soul and help us find joy. And so, these books are really good for this: Ordinary Mary's Positively Extraordinary Day. And then her other one is Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed. And both of these are beautiful books. And, and I, I just I've. I think both of them were worth getting both are by Emily Pearson and both are illustrated by Fumi Kosaka, but they're just very sweet books and show the power a child has to do and make a difference in the world.

Another one is called, Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller and illustrated by Jen Hill. It's a very sweet picture book. And this little girl is trying to figure out how to make this other little girl feel better because she spills her grape juice on her dress, and it stains her dress. She's trying to say the right things and do the right things to encourage this little girl and to encourage others. And it's a very sweet little story, and it shows the frustration of sometimes you try to do the right thing and it doesn't come across quite right. Because she says her favorite color is purple because she knows this other girl's favorite color is purple, but she thinks she's making fun of her cause she spilled grape juice. And so, she cries instead of being blessed, and Tanisha is the one who spilled her grape juice. And so, it shows trying to help someone and persisting in that, even though sometimes the act of kindness isn't quite received right the first time, you keep trying. I liked that about it too. So that's a very cute book about the same topic we're talking about.

Another one is called Those Shoes. Those Shoes is by Maribeth Boelts and illustrated by Noah Z. Jones. It's a sweet story about this little kid, and this is really good for little boys too because almost all the characters in it are boys. These little boys have the latest, cool shoes that everybody's wanting to wear. They're the black sneakers with two white stripes, and all the boys have them except for the main character. And Jeremy is from a poor family and he just can't afford those shoes, and he lives with his grandma and she wants to get them for him, but she just can't do that with their budget. So, they go to the thrift stores and try to find some and they find a pair at the third thrift store they go to and he buys them, even though they're too small and he keeps hoping they'll stretch. He puts them on every day after school and tries to make them stretch, and they just don't stretch, and he just can't wear them. So, they just sit in his bedroom, and he winds up wearing his other shoes that are not cool. Then one day his neighbor friend comes over to play and sees the shoes. And he's like, "Oh my goodness, you have some of those shoes. Those are so cool." And he doesn't want to talk about it. He's saying to himself, "I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it" or not going to say it. I forget what he says, but he keeps telling himself "I'm not going to do it." And finally, he does. He gives the shoes to the neighbor boy because his feet are smaller, and they'll fit. And it comments on how the neighbor boy's shoes are like held together with tape. They're falling apart, and he feels bad, but he just doesn't want to give up those shoes, even though he can't wear them. So, he finally does, and he feels so good about it. And it's just a really good picture of showing that, even though he's disappointed he couldn't have the shoes, he was able to bless someone else. I think it teaches a lot for children in a lot of conversations we could have with our children about giving and making a difference in someone else's life and not being so focused on ourselves and making a difference. Even though we are disappointed, we can still bless someone else.

Now there's one book it's actually not out yet. And I was trying to find out more about it, but it sounds so intriguing that I'm going to go ahead and mention it here. It doesn't actually launch until January, 2021. And it's a book for boys and it's called The Book of Dares: 100 Ways for Boys to Be Kind, Bold, and Brave by Ted bunch and Anna Marie Johnson Teague. I thought this sounds so intriguing. I want to check it out when it does come out, but the grade level or age level for this grade level is three through third through seventh grades, age level is eight to 12. So, it's where a little bit older kid. And it's challenging them with 100 inspiring, creative, fun challenges for boys to be kind and respectful and to share with others around them. So, I think this is a really unique book, and I'm anxious to look at it. Like I said, I can't, I haven't seen it yet. It's not out, we can't preview it or anything, but that's one on the horizon that I would watch for and check out when it does come out.

Now, there was another book I was very hopeful about sharing with you. All I've read of it is pretty good, except it borders on the lines of New Age. And it is a Christian book, and it talks about God having a plan for our lives. It's written for middle school and upper elementary age boys. And it's challenging them to live a positive life and to keep their mind focused on positive things. And I think it's so close to being good, but there's so much in it that is still New Age. And so, I'm mentioning it, not because I want to recommend it. I'm mentioning it because we do have to be careful what we give our children to read, especially when they're hitting the middle school, high school years. There are so many good books out there, and there's so many seemed-to-be-good books that aren't, we have to be careful to guard against the false teachings that are running amuck in our culture right now. So, I want to kind of clarify.

I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each of our lives. It says in the Bible that he created us for a good works that he ordained before we were ever born. So he has a plan for us and for what we're supposed to do with our lives. And he has a plan for every one of our children, no matter what their abilities or disabilities are, there are no mistakes. He has a plan. I believe that with all my heart, however, a lot of it that is out there being taught right now is very similar to the secret and the law of attraction that says the universe will give you what you tell it to give you basically where we make ourselves little gods. And unfortunately, that has become a teaching that has been embraced by some churches and some preachers. And I think it's a very dangerous theology because the focus of the Gospel, even though it is for us, the focus is not us. The focus is God and what he has provided for us and his plan for mankind and for eternity. And so we need to keep our eyes focused on, we are following him. We are his disciples, and we can have a very fulfilling, rich, amazing, overwhelmingly joyful life in following him in obedience. And when we walk in obedience to his plan and his word and what he wants us to do, then it is a joyful and a fulfilling opportunity every day that we live. But when we focus on ourselves and we're striving and we're trying to get God to do what we want him to do, we run into a trap where we are making ourselves god; we fall into this false theology. That is American Buddhism is what I call it, but it's even worse than American Buddhism. It's making us god. I think it's very dangerous for our children to fall into that.

We do need to make them aware of that. And I've talked with my kids a lot. It is a combination of New Age and Christian theology synchronized together. The gospel is no longer a gospel of denying ourselves, taking up our cross daily and following him. It's a prosperity theology where we are meant to live our best life, and our best life isn't till heaven. This life is full of pain and sorrow. And we have to hold onto that joy that God has given us. And we have to be a people who are different than the world—peculiar people who are always loving our enemies and who are seeking to show kindness, generosity, and love to our brothers and sisters, as well as to those outside the church. The Bible is very clear that we're to count the cost to follow Christ.

And if all Christ has for us is to live a cushy, wonderful, rich, wealthy life here on earth, what is the cost we're counting? That makes no sense. No, Jesus warned us. We would be persecuted. He warned us there would be tough times. He warned us that the world would reject us. They rejected him. And so they're going to reject us. We're told that they will think we're foolish, and we see it all the time now in our culture. And it's been in the world. I mean, if you've traveled overseas, you know that it's everywhere. Christians are being persecuted. People of faith in general are being persecuted in many countries. The gospel is mocked, and we need to be tough people, and we've got to help our children be tough people. And if we don't teach our children how to find the joy amidst the sorrow and that there's strength in the joy of the Lord, then we're hurting our kids.

We need to help them be resilient and strong and steadfast, and to hold on to the joy of the Lord, which is their strength. And we've got to learn the same thing. You know, admittedly sometimes it is a struggle and a battle. I think if it were easy, it wouldn't be that big a deal, but it is something that we have to do. And we have to acknowledge that this is reality. There's a video and a book I'd like to recommend for the parents. This would not be for the children. I don't think it would be something that maybe high schoolers could handle it, but it's a pretty gritty video and it's a real story. And it's called The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected by Nik Ripken and Greg Lewis. And he has a second book, The Insanity of Obedience: Walking with Jesus in Tough Places also by Nik Ripken. The video is called The Insanity of God and it's published by the International Mission Board and LifeWay of the Southern Baptist Convention. And the Ripken's were missionaries for the Southern Baptist Convention for most of their ministry life. And they served in some very tough places. God took them on a journey of understanding Christian persecution and understanding counting the cost in following God. And I think it's a powerful video to watch, especially if you are coming from the West and a Western mindset of Christianity; it's a whole different understanding it's eye-opening and life-changing. So I do recommend that for the parents. It's an excellent resource and there's also a video on YouTube called Sheep Among Wolves, Volume 2, I recommend volume two. Volume One is the same video, just volume two is made better when they had more funding. It's the same testimonies and same story.

But these two videos are so eye-opening and life-changing. For those of us who have been brought up in the shelter of a culture that appreciates Christianity, that acknowledges Christianity, and allows us freedom to worship, these videos are very powerful and important videos that I think we need to watch. And what it did for me too, was even though I didn't feel even my kids at the age they are that they were quite ready to watch these, it helped me as a parent to know how to talk to my kids and to help them see a bigger picture than just what we have here in our country. At this time, even though things are heating up a little bit here, it is nothing like it is in other countries. I felt like it was important for me to educate myself so that then I could be a better parent with Insanity of God. There are some discussion materials that go along with it as well.

Another thing that we do each year—we participate in IDOP, the International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church [November 1, 2020]. And there are materials on Open Doors' website and there's material for children as well. And I think this is also good. The materials for the children are quite appropriate. They're excellent, they're free. And you can get your church involved, but even if you don't just using it in your own family and in your own prayer time to be praying for our brothers and sisters who are standing firm in their faith, even though they're persecuted. So I think that's something that we need to address and help our children be aware of.

I want to end with one more book that is by one author that I really like: Mo Willems and illustrated by Amber Ren, and it's called Because this book is so cute because, because it starts out with one thing happens and then that causes another thing to happen. And another thing to happen, it results in this young girl becoming conductor of an orchestra. It's just so cute because you see how each person's decision each person's circumstance and everything that happened was for a purpose.

And then another one for this is a story I wrote. That's about Joseph. That one I believe is available. When you sign up for my mailing list, I'll have to check and see if it's still on there as one of your downloads when you sign up for my mailing list, but it talks about God's sovereignty and how he works through our circumstances and how he did in Joseph's life. And sometimes we think something is bad, but God is using it for good.

And that helps to help us hang onto that joy and to keep on rejoicing, because we know ultimately God is in control. God hasn't left us or forsaken us no matter how bad our situation may become. We know that he is still in charge. He still has his hand in our lives, and he still has a plan for our lives. And so I think teaching this to our children, that what they do, no matter how small, if it's a small, if it is a small act of kindness or an encouraging word, not flattery, but true encouragement, they can see that they have that power to make a difference in someone's life. And then when we look at books, like because, and the story of Joseph, we see that God has a plan that even what other people meant for harm in some situations, or even when circumstances seem bad, we know that God is working them out for good.

And so teaching our kids, those two facts can be very powerful in their lives. And of course, helping them to realize always that God is God and we are not. And we don't understand everything that God is doing and being humble before our God and acknowledging that he's in control. And he's the one we're following. If he does something, don't like, that's not our right. I'd say it's like in the Bible. Well, I was reading the other day. It says, you know, does the pot complain to the Potter? What are you doing? I don't want to be this way. You know, no, that would be ridiculous. The Potter molds and makes the pottery into what he wants it to be for whatever you see he has for it. And God is good God. And if we truly acknowledge that he is God, and that we come to him with nothing except our own sinful nature.

Then we humble ourselves before him. We repent of our sins. We ask for his forgiveness and then we walk with him and following him, that is a whole different attitude than what a lot of people are taught today. So we need to be teaching the truth to our children, that a call to follow Christ is not a call to a cushy life. A call to follow Christ is a call to a strong life with people of integrity and who stand firm in the face of trials and struggles and hardships because we know God will carry us through and that God knows better than we do what's going on. And that our standing firm shows God to the world. And I don't think we always recognize that. But when we stand and we stand fearlessly in the face of struggles, we have joy. In spite of our sorrows, the world sees something they don't understand and that they want to know more about.

And we help make God's name known among the nations. We helped glorify his name. So I pray for him. Were you, I know that you are, you may be struggling with something today. You may just be struggling with trying to raise your children and knowing how to do so. And I just pray for you that God will fill you with his wisdom, that he will enable you to walk faithfully in obedience to him, and that his joy will flow through your life, to those around you, that they will be able to see the glory of God at work in your life today. Thank you for joining us for books that spark a podcast series, writing books, that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Be sure to check out my website, TerrieHellardBrown.com.

When you join my mailing list, you automatically receive access to several freebies. Just for those who sign up, that you can download and use with your children. And remember, we have a great giveaway. The month of October Glenys is giving away a signed copy of her brand new book called Little Mole's Christmas Gift. All you have to do to enter is comment on this blog post or on one of the social media posts about it, the giveaway, and you'll be entered to win. We'll draw the winner at the end of October and announced the winner around November 1st. [Open to US residence only].

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials.

Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion leading to teachable moments with our kids. Her podcast posts each Tuesday morning.

Her blog posts are published each Thursday and discuss living as a disciple of Christ while discipling our children. She challenges us to step out of our comfort zones to walk by faith in obedience to Christ.

For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

Terrie uses her experiences as a mother of four (three on "the spectrum"), 37 years in ministry (15 in Taiwan), and 32 years teaching to speak to the hearts of readers.

Her motto is "Growing older is inevitable; growing up is optional" and keeps her childlike joy by writing children's stories, delighting over pink dolphins, and frequently laughing till it hurts.

Disclaimer: Although Terrie majored in psychology and sociology for her bachelor's degree and has taught AP Psychology, she is NOT a licensed therapist. She sometimes mentions items in her blog and podcast that could be considered comments on psychology, but these comments are based on ministry experience and ministering to people through the missions and church work she's done for the past 36 years. If you have questions about psychological disorders or counseling needs, please consider finding a reputable, licensed counselor in your area. Terrie's comments should be seen as anecdotal and ministry-experience-related or scripture-based. Thank you!

In today's episode we interview Cassie Rajewich and discuss resources for single parents and their children.

Our Guest: Cassie Rajewich

Cassie Rajewich is the creator of Unconventional Motherhood: Helping Single Moms Master Messy Places

After ten years of mastering her own mess of single motherhood, she ditched the security and comfort of the life she had built, upped and left her residence of Las Vegas, and made the move to Southern California where she began a new adventure, blending a family. She now helps other women navigate the sometimes-difficult journey of single motherhood.

You can visit her site at cassierajewich.com or check out her Facebook group The Savvy Christian Single Mom to learn about how she offers her heart and how-to tips to help other single moms master their mess and step into the life God has called them to.

Books Recommended in This Episode:

Transcript: Terrie: Welcome to "Books that Spark" a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids. Today, we have a very special guest Cassie Rajewich. Cassie is the creator of Unconventional Motherhood: Helping Single Moms Master Messy Places. After ten years of mastering her own mess of single motherhood, she ditched the security and comfort of the life she had built, upped and left her residence of Las Vegas, and made the move to Southern California where she began a new adventure, blending a family. She now helps other women navigate the sometimes-difficult journey of single motherhood. You can visit her site at cassierajewich.com or check out her Facebook group The Savvy Christian Single Mom to learn about how she offers her heart and how-to tips to help other single moms master their mess and step into the life God has called them to. Cassie. I'm so glad you joined us today.

Cassie: Thank you so much, Terrie. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here with you.

Terrie: Well, tell us first, a little bit about the ministry you have.

Cassie: I am a, I serve single moms really is what I do. I serve them in messy places and messy places can look like a lot of things. But I serve them in two ways as a lifestyle strategic and as a certified financial coach, I meet them in those hard places, either transitioning out of divorce. But also just that messiness of single motherhood. So maybe there's a lot of mindset issues or mindset management. Finances definitely are big and boundaries. A lot of times just explaining what those things are and, but just really loving on them and the overwhelm of single motherhood is what I do.

Terrie: That's awesome. How can a busy single mom find time to read to her kids?

Cassie: Well, I was going to say busy, single moms could do Audible. That's not going to be reading to their children, but you're going to have to be intentional and carve it out. Many times I know a lot of times it's at the end of the day when everyone just wants to wind down, usually after bath, and just say, okay, we're going to take--even if it's setting a timer--we're going to take 20, 15, 30 minutes, pick one, two books, whatever you have capacity for in that moment would be how I did it and how many moms are doing it.

Terrie: And how has reading with and to your children been important to you.

Cassie: As a single mom for 10 years and with my journey and I had my little one, I would say was started our single mom, my single mom journey with her. She was 18 months. So, you know, really right off the get go and the father was hit and miss. And then we moved out of state. Gosh, we had a lot of topics to cover in that time. So for me it was, it had a lot of ways for me to connect one. It was, I was, I was busy, so for us to bond and just have that space where it's just her and I, because she, they really need that. She really needed that with me. Another way is to address conversations that have our children afraid or worried or overwhelmed, and it's bringing in scenarios that can comfort them.

Terrie: Yeah. So what are some books you would recommend reading to children, especially, do you have some specifically for dealing with that transition during divorce or losing a parent?

Cassie: I have one little book that is sweet. It's called Two Homes and it's a sweet story, really welcoming the conversation. It's actually called Two Homes. It's by Claire Maurel. And like I said, it's a sweet story, welcoming the conversation of divorce and living in two separate homes. It's really important to understand the dynamic and, and you would know the mother would know, or the father would know, you know, maybe there is not even another parent to, to have to go to. So there may not even be a co-parenting, but this is a sweet little story about a little one that goes back and forth and it just kind of unboxing that conversation of, of living in two homes.

Terrie: That's great. What other books would you recommend?

Cassie: Lysa TerKeurst has a really neat book out, and it's called It Will Be Okay. And it's a beautiful book serving the hearts of our little ones, especially during times of change and things, these types of topics divorce or separation or a loss of that just really trigger fear. That's a cute little story about little seed and little Fox and they're facing their fears and when things are changing, right, because our little ones, they thrive in times of safety or security or consistency. So when there is that upheaval can really challenge their emotions. So this is a really sweet story, about little seed and little thoughts, and that is Lysa TerKeurst.

Terrie: I love that book. I think it's such a sweet book. Well, I want to talk about some books too, that would help parents going through transition and helping their kids through these times. Do you have some books you would recommend for moms and dads?

Cassie: Well, I did pull two books that I really like for single moms. But you did touch on dads and for single dads, there's just so much more out there for moms. It seems like you're going to have to dig a little bit more for the dads and the single dad topics, especially, and that's, that goes even beyond books, but there is a really sweet book it's called Ask Me and it's by author Bernard Waber I think is the correct pronunciation and Suzy Lee. It's a favorite book for me to recommend to dads. And it's a story about a little girl, and she's simply asking her father questions and commenting on the world. And it's just a really sweet dynamic of a father daughter conversation just brings in that narrative of the dad and the daughter. So it's sweet. Nice.

Terrie: And then what would you recommend for single moms?

Cassie: Well, I think because I find this often is the mindset we can really, you know, dealing with the shame and the guilt and the transition and out of a marriage, maybe you weren't even married. So there's going to just be lots of mindset, challenges, and emotions to overcome. There's a great book by Jess Connolly and it's just out last year and because I love challenging and to go big and bold places, this is a great book. And it's titled You Are the Girl for the Job: Daring to Believe the God Who Calls You. And I mean, it just says it right there, but it's just stepping up to the plate and saying God's called me regardless of whatever choices I've made or whatever. It's his capacity and his willingness to meet me where I'm at, and he's gonna walk with me through a journey to do big things and bold and brave things.

Terrie: Wow. That sounds really like an amazing book. I hadn't heard of that one. I love it. I love the title

Cassie: I do too. I do too. And it's a really good book and it just, I, as a single mom, myself, I had a lot of questions and working with single moms, we have a lot of questions and the enemy has a great way of creating doubt in us that this was all a big mistake. And where do I go from here? And so it really begins to say, Hey, wait a second, that's got a plan for you and he's got it. He's going to take you there.

Terrie: Oh, that's awesome. Just as a kind of a side note, would you comment on the church and how you think the church is in accepting and nurturing, and being there for single moms and children in single parent families today?

Cassie: I was a single mom. And this is a great question. I love that you asked it, Terrie. This is a really important question and that's probably why God called me to serve and have, has called so many single moms to serve because we've experienced the healing, the deliverance, they, the life giving that he's poured into us and we're able to give that back. But as far as the church, as the church building goes, personally, my experience has been lacking. A lot of, you know, churches are traditional the nuclear family and it's hard for a single mom maybe to even just have the capacity, the bandwidth, the energy to even get to the building. Oftentimes when she does arrive every net doesn't all look like her. And that could be really so I don't, I don't know so much if it's the church, but it's a combination of that relationship that can, that can really kind of impede on the welcoming and the relationship of growing in that place. Jennifer Maggio, she's out of Louisiana, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She's got an actual book—Overwhelmed: The Life of a Single Mom, but she's doing really great things and serving churches and helping equip churches with single moms situation. So there are resources out there if this, the lands on anyone's ears that has the ability to bring in that the resources that anyway, Jennifer Maggio has got a great curriculum and just different tools for churches to help them with that topic.

Terrie: That's awesome. It was so interesting. We were missionaries in Taiwan for 15 years and one time I came home ahead of my family and I was very pregnant with my fourth child and probably shouldn't have been traveling, but I was. I went to church with my mom, and it was a new church. They didn't know me. And it was so interesting because I'm a pastor's wife and a missionary. So I'm used to going to churches and everyone just kinda like buzzing around asking questions and, you know, being very accepted because that's my role as a missionary. Here I am this pregnant woman coming to the church with my mom and stepdad. And the way I was treated that Sunday was so eye-opening. It was like, people weren't sure how to talk to me. I think they all thought I was a single mom coming to see my mom and I was pregnant. And it was like, they didn't want to know my story. And it was just weird because I could sense the difference in people's attitude. Then when they found out that I just had come ahead of my family and that they would be there and that I was a missionary, then all of a sudden everyone was interested and weren't afraid to talk to me. And I thought, Oh my goodness! If this is what it feels like to be a single parent, especially if you're pregnant and suddenly single and coming into a church and no one's coming around you and welcoming you and wanting to hear your story, how heartbreaking that would be and how discouraging that would be. And it just totally opened my eyes to that. And I just thought, Wow! It really shocked me. I had no idea that it would be that palpable, that obvious that there was such a difference in attitude.

Cassie: And, and I love the way you put that. And of course that's a whole other conversation, but it is, it is true. And it is real. And I very much remember experiencing that my myself trying to push my way in knowing God had, had called me a big one that had ran from a call. And just trying to overcome so many things, the place where it's that conversation of man, this is, I don't understand it, or this is too hard for me, or this is uncomfortable, or I'm going to say the wrong thing. So you, you just, you just don't touch it at all. Right. And, you know, God is doing a great thing in the body of Christ right now, where he is rising up people, you know, just like myself or like you, or, you know, in the podcast and, and all these different movements we have going on, where there are more people that are willing and ready and equipped to handle hard situations. So that, that gives me hope.

Terrie: Yeah. I agree. I see it too. More and more, but that was just really interesting to go through. Okay. I want to bring it back to books and I want to ask you, what was your favorite picture book as a child?

Cassie: They were the Golden Books. Yeah. I loved the like the Jack and Jill. They were very traditional that I loved. I loved them. I loved my baby dolls. I was that kind of gal, even though I was a tomboy and I played outside, I had a very sense of just being a girl and something about those Golden Books I really liked. And the pictures that they displayed, I'm not sure if you're familiar with them.

Terrie: Yes. Yeah. I grew up with them too. My favorite one was it was the under the ocean or something, which it showed you the weird fish in the bottom of the ocean that had the lights and stuff. And I just loved that book. I would read it and look at the pictures over and over again. And it was a Little Golden Book. I loved those too. I had a bunch. What were your favorite picture books to read to your own children when they were little?

Cassie: I have one. So the one I was did my single mom journey where I feel like I have two separate lives. Terrie, I feel like I'm two separate people. On some days, my journey of raising my daughter, I didn't remarry until she was just at a lot. She's almost 11, but that book with her and still is a favorite. Cause I've got three other ones now that are little. And we do read often is I Miss You Stinky Face. And have you read that?

Terrie: I've never heard of that one.

Cassie: It's a collection of stinky faces. And but this one is I Miss You Stinky Face. There is, I Love You Stinky Face, but it's such a, especially for moms or parents of single parenting, there is this sometimes just this connection and the sadness and this loss. And sometimes even a fear that what if you go missing, you know, what, if even what we have right now doesn't work or what if you don't come home from work one day, mom and I miss you. Stinky face was a book of my mom had found and brought into my home with my little girl. And even recently I found that book of hers. I have a little one for our, for a new one that I bought for my three younger ones. But I have the older one that we had that had pulled it out a few months ago. And I read it to her. I called her and I read it to her on the phone. And she just, we just all did. It just took us back to when she was little cause they need that sometimes don't they Terrie?

Terrie: I read picture books to my kids all the time. They like it. Is there anything else you'd like to share that's on your heart or mind right now?

Cassie: Well, I had, and thank you for asking. I had one more book and it was Boundaries with Kids because as single moms, there's not two of us. There's only one. And obviously you want to bring in the best community that you can, that gives you more eyes and ears and hands and hearts. But boundaries with kids is a wonderful place to go for moms that are struggling with managing the children and just trying to guide them and direct them. So that's a great resource. And then I didn't really touch too many books on. I deal with a lot of moms who have walked out of abusive relationships, and this is a place where the body of Christ has really dropped the ball and educating, or, or just even loving and trusting and hearing and leaning in to the abuse that's going on. And the marriages. And often times we've got, we have to get away. And that was my story. It was like, I don't, I do not want to divorce. Oh my gosh, can I hang on to this? But for safety reasons, I have to step away and it never healed. It never got on, got to the place I had desire. So desired it to go. So knowing your situation, knowing your children you know, there's a tons, tons of books out there, but are they going to meet your child's needs? And are they going to meet the needs of your home and your heart and where God is taking you? So that is probably one of my, my biggest advices was meal because of this. There's a, there's an aching place, a deep aching in, in a child's heart. Sometimes when it, when it, when life isn't easy to co-parent when there, when that kind of abuse and that level of dynamic has reached the heart of the home. And I'm sorry, that sounded probably a little heavy, but that's the truth. This is a truthful place of what's going on.

Terrie: Yeah. And we don't want to talk about it, but I mean, there's even abuse within the church that needs to be addressed. And I have at least two friends who were formerly pastor's wives who were abused by their pastor husbands and that's something, I mean, to bring healing to that kind of a situation and to support people going through that, I we've tried to do what we could over the years and it is a hard ministry. Yeah. I'm glad to know that part of your ministry is, is that is helping abused spouses to get out of a situation that's not safe. How can we support you and help you in your ministry that God has given you? What can we do as listeners of this podcast, what would you say that we could do to help you?

Cassie: I guess, if you know of a single mom that is in need of support of someone that's gonna walk the side, her that's feeling lonely, that's needing encouragement. That needs to be injected hope or you are of a nonprofit of that type that needs someone to that, you know, you're trying to understand this dynamic yourself. You can visit my website and which is CassieRajewich.com and when you can also send them to, I have a single mom group that really helps single moms. Many of them are coming out of abusive relationships, but also they're just in the middle of the overwhelm. And that is the Savvy Christian Single Mom on Facebook.

Terrie: I'll put the links in our show notes, so people can find you easily. So be sure to check out the show notes that those links will be there. Okay. Anything else you'd like to add today?

Cassie: No, Terrie, I so appreciate the conversation and you being willing to have me on.

Terrie: Well, I'm happy you came on. Since we met, I have just been so impressed with you and just love the heart and the ministry that you have. For people who don't know Cassie, she is a very bubbly, energetic person that has the most encouraging and optimistic spirit. And I think it's wonderful. I can just see how God would use you to bring healing in people's lives because of your own journey, but also because you have such a trust in a God who heals. And I think it's very evident when people meet you that that's the truth. And I love it.

Cassie: Terrie, you're going to just make me cry with all your words. I think that's probably one of the sweetest things I ever heard besides the comment my mom made on Facebook the other day, but that was my mom.

Terrie: Good. I'm glad I can encourage you.

Terrie: Thank you for joining us for Books that Spark a podcast, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Be sure to check out my website, TerrieHellardBrown.com. When you join my mailing list, you automatically receive access to several freebies just for those who sign up.

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives and to help parents disciple their children. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials. Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this episode I interview Glenys Nellist who has published more than 20 board books, picture books, and Bible story books. We celebrate her book launch today for Little Mole's Christmas Gift.

Books Recommended in This Episode:

Our Guest: Author Glenys Nellist Website: https://www.glenysnellist.com/

Transcript:Terrie: Welcome to "Books that Spark" a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books, that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids. Today we're so excited to have a special guest Glenys Nellist, who is a writer. She was born and raised in a little village in Northern England. The author of multiple children's books, including the bestselling Twas the Evening of Christmas, The Wonder that Is You, and many popular series, including Love Letters from God, Snuggle Time, Good News, and The Little Mole. Her writing reflects a deep passion for helping children discover joy in the world. Glenys lives in Michigan with her husband David. Glenys, thank you for joining us today. I'm so excited. I've been looking forward to talking with you.

Glenys: Terrie, I'm looking forward to our time together too well.

Terrie: I'm so excited to share your beautiful books. You have such a heart for children in your writing, and it's like you see the child's heart, that it needs gentle, loving words to nurture and to guide the heart of a child. What inspires you as you write these wonderful books?

Glenys: Thank you for those kind words. I've always had a heart for children. I was a teacher in my previous life. I'm from England, and I taught primary school children. And so I've just always had a love for children and a love for reading. But in terms of what inspired me, I don't know. It's kind of hard to say. I mean, in many ways, my work, when we came to the United States. I stepped out of teaching and began pastoring a church alongside my husband. He was the pastor, and I was the Christian education director. So, in many ways, what inspired me to begin was a love for the Bible stories. And I found writing, rewriting those stories for my teachers, I just fell in love with the way there's always a new way to tell the old, old story.

That's really what inspired me to start writing my first book, which was a book of Bible stories. And it all kind of started from there. That first book, Love Letters from God, is 18 Bible stories. And each story has a lift the flap love letter from God that you can address personally to the child. It was important to me to include that personal interaction because I think that's what God wants from all of us when we read the Bible or when we sit to pray; God wants that personal connection with us and God as our creator who knows our names. And so the thought of being able to read a book with a child where a letter is personally addressed to them from God, and I know you can't see me, but I'm doing that little, you know, quotation marks--"from God," because obviously I wrote the letters, but a lot of prayer and thought went into those letters because that's not something you do lightly, you know, everything I wrote, I wanted to be sure that God, if God were here, that's what God would be saying to the child.

And so, I based all those letters on Bible verses where God was speaking. So, it couldn't be a Bible verse that said, for example, "God will be with you." It has to be, "I will be with you" that way. I tried to just enter God's mind, if you like, and just pray for the Holy Spirit: "What do you want me to say in this letter?" So, yeah, that was my first book. Love Letters from God. And that was published in 2014 and turned into a picture book series.

Terrie: And then they also have these in a Bible as well, right?

Glenys: Oh yes. That was so exciting for me. After the first book was published, we then brought out these books are published by Zonderkidz. They were my first publisher love letters from God was followed by Christmas Love Letters from God. And then if you're going to do Christmas, you have to do Easter. So, there's an Easter Love Letters from God. There's also one for women and girls in the Bible, which is Love Letters from God Bible Stories for a Girl's Heart. I'm not an author that really thinks that boys and girls need different texts. But the Bible is so--well. It's written by men, and it's full of stories about men and boys, but there are wonderful stories of girls and women hiding sometimes. And so, I just wanted to tease those out. But anyway, the one I think you're referring to somewhere in that process, that publication of the series Zonderkidz came to me, which is always great, you know, when your publisher comes to you, and said, we would like to publish a full edition Bible, but we'd like you to write, I think it was about maybe 30, 40 love letters that we can place at strategic points within the biblical text. That was yeah. Love letters from God Holy Bible. And that was amazing for me. I'm not really the author of that, you understand, but it was a wonderful opportunity just to expand on the series and write more love letters that God might write. And I think also in that Bible Zonderkidz left space so that children could write back to God or make little notes, you know? So yeah, it was so nice.

Terrie: I know you had most recently your book Grandma Snuggles launched around Grandparent's Day. I thought that was really cute, but you have a whole series of Snuggle Time books, right? Are they all board books?

Glenys: That was the second series of books that I launched with Zonderkidz. The first one is called Snuggle Time Prayers. And then we followed that with Snuggle Time Psalms and these are all small with the soft back. So, they're nice for kids to hold, and they're chewable which is important for little ones. They're all written in rhyme, which is something I've always loved to do. What I really love the Psalms one, because I just talk, I think 14 or 15, well known sounds like for example, Psalm 23, you know, the Lord is my shepherd, and you might not think that the Psalms are for children. You know, when you think of reading the Bible to children, it's always the stories, the iconic Bible stories, but the Psalms are so beautiful and poetic and wonderful and paint wonderful pictures of God. And so, I just felt like I could find a way to make the Psalms accessible for little ones. And so that is one of my favorite titles. And then we did Snuggle Time Christmas Stories, and then Snuggle Time Fall Blessings, which is popular right now, you know, with the leaves falling down. And then I think the most recent one that I did was Snuggle Time Bible Stories. That's just a sweet little series, and there are two more to come that I've done Snuggle Time Easter and Snuggle Time Love. And I think those are publishing 2022. It's just a huge blessing, and then to add Grandma Snuggles alongside them. Grandma Snuggles launched in September.

Terrie: Little Mole's, Christmas Gift launches today. I love Little Mole Finds Hope. And so I'm excited to read the new one that launches today. Can you tell us a little bit about your Little Mole series?

Glenys: I think everybody loves Little Mole because he's such a sweet little guy. These books are published by Beaming Books. Little Mole Finds Hope, as you said, was the first in the series. It was published I think February of this year, basically Little Mole Finds Hope is an Easter-themed book. I'm excited about it because it was really my first sort of crossover the title. And what I mean by that is if your listeners are not familiar, up to this point, pretty much all my books published with Zonderkidz and Our Daily Bread Ministries had a mainly Christian slant, if not religious. But Little Mole Finds Hope was my first foray into trying to write a book that would reach both the religious and the secular markets. If you are a Christian, you will see the Resurrection in Little Mole Finds Hope because it's all about Little Mole who is sad. He lives underground, and so he's kind of literally and figuratively in the dark. And his mom suggests one day, "Why don't we go and look outside for hope?" And he says, "What's that? Hope? What is it? Where can it be found?" And so the premise is that hope can be found even in the darkest place--a tulip bulb or a daffodil bulb that looks dead and lifeless will one day be a beautiful flower. And of course, the butterfly that looks shriveled and lifeless in a Chrysalis will one day be a beautiful butterfly. It's simply a story of Little Mole finding that hope can live even in the dark. It's kind of a good message for COVID, you know? That even in the darkest place, hope can be found. And so obviously if you're a Christian, the message is resurrection and new life in Jesus, but we deliberately did not mention God or Jesus in the book because we just want it to be read by people of faith and people who aren't. And in the back of that book, there's a little section on tips for adults or parents, caregivers helping if the child is feeling sad. And so that was, you know, a wonderful first introduction for Little Mole.

And then, so the book that releases today. Yay! Happy birthday, Christmas Gift! And it's a little early to be talking Christmas, but you know, in the publishing world, you have to get the titles out and in the stores. All the retailers have to know what's coming down the line. So Little Mole is back. And this time when we meet him, he's less unsure of the world. And he's super excited because he's found this massive mushroom for mama in the woods, and he's had his eye on it for a while and he decides this is going to be a fabulous Christmas present for mama. He pushes it, and he pulls it, and he finally topples it. And he's super excited. And the illustrations by Sally Garland are just wonderful. But there's a wonderful illustration where Little Mole is imagining this big Christmas gift and how much joy it will bring him to give to mama and how much she will love it. And you know, who among us has not felt that, you know, when we're out shopping and we have our eye on this gift, and we think that is the gift, and you're excited, you know, to wrap it and to give it. So I think we can identify with the emotions of Little Mole. Well, unfortunately as he's on his way back to the burrow, as he's dragging this big, massive mushroom, well, he encounters three little Woodland friends, and they're all in need. And so our little guy has a big decision to make, should he share his mushroom with his friends in need? Or should he save it for mama? It's just a sweet little story of kindness and generosity, and we sure need a lot of kindness in our world. Don't we?

Terrie: Yeah, we sure do. I can't wait to read it. It sounds adorable. Well, my absolute favorite one of all your books that I've read--this book made me cry. I love it so much. And that's The Wonder that Is You. Oh, I just that book, I think it's going to be on my gift list from now on for new moms, because I think it's such a beautiful thing.

Glenys: Oh, I'm so glad that you brought that up. I'm so glad to have the opportunity to talk about it, but The Wonder that Is You came about, because my editor invited me to lunch one day. I was all nervous, you know, but it's a wonderful thing when you could meet your editor face to face. I have just learned in this publishing journey to ask my editors one important question, and that is "What are you looking for?" Her answer to that question is the reason why The Wonder That Is You was born. She said, "I'm looking for a book that will celebrate the arrival of a new child in the family, whether through birth or adoption." And so I said, "Okay, let me think about that." And I went home and what is that book, Terrie? That the really popular book that sold millions. And I can't just remember the author now, but it's the go-to book for all the showers. It's the one with the two polar bears dancing together on the front cover. Do you know which one I'm thinking? [On the Night You Were Born by Nancy Tillman]

Terrie: But if you ever wondered or—

Glenys: It's something like that. It's just escaping me now.

Terrie: I think I actually have it in my bookshelf here. I was just trying to find it.

Glenys: I do too, but I just cannot for the life of me remember, but it's a wonderful book and really it's a go-to book for baby showers and new baby gifts. And actually that book is so clever because that book is a secular book, but there is a Bible verse at the very end. And it's the one from Psalm 139: "I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made." And so anyway, I know that your listeners right now, they'll be like, "Oh, they're talking about that book." And I just can't remember the title, but anyway, she said, "I want to book like that one." So, I went away and Terrie, it was just, I don't even know what made me think of that. But I was thinking about when--we have four wonderful children, all grown now like yours, but when my first son was born, I had this amazing experience in the hospital. Like I was flying because I was so full of joy and wonder at being a mother. That was the impetus for The Wonder That Is You. And so that book is dedicated to my eldest son and you know, it's marvelous what God will do with a title because so many women have told me I'm going to buy this for my grown up kids because somehow I think it just captures the emotions and the feeling that mothers have when they hold their child for the first time, whether they give birth to that child or whether they're adopted. And actually I should say, I should correct myself because that title was actually my first crossover title, because although it's published by Zonderkidz, there are no direct religious references. What I tried to do was to capture: suppose all creation, rejoices. When a new child enters the family. Suppose rivers bubble over with joy, and suppose the trees clap their hands, and suppose the stars are singing. I'm so glad that you love that book because it really is one of my favorites too really.

Terrie: Even if they don't, it feels that way for us. Our life is so changed, and we feel like the world is rejoicing with us. Everything has changed. And you know, we waited so long to have kids. And when that first child was born, she was such a miracle. You just captured my heart with what you said. That's exactly how I felt. And so, I just, I love it.

Glenys: Thank you. Well, that gives me goosebumps to hear you say that, and just to talk about it. Because you know what happens is when you're a busy mom all that wonder, sometimes it can just slip through your fingers and you forget that, you know, in the midst of diapers and laundry and babies and crying in the night, you forget the miracle and the joy and the wonder of being a mom. And so, I think what you just said is right, that even if the trees don't know we are never the same. And I think any words that can take us back to that place of wonder I think are a special thing.

Terrie: Then you have a book coming out. When will that release?

Glenys: Actually, that one will release in February of 2021 Twas the Morning of Easter.

Terrie: Yeah. And I've already read the Christmas one: Twas the Evening of Christmas. And I love that one. I love the artwork. Your illustrator in those made beautiful pictures.

Glenys: I know. She is a Russian illustrator, Elena Selivanova. That one is published by Zonderkidz. And I remember, again, having lunch with him the first time I had lunch with my editor, we were talking about Love Letters from God, that very first book. And she just said, do you have anything else that you've written? And I said, well, I do. I have a poem that's based on the Clement C. Moore Classic. But instead of being called Twas the Night Before Christmas, it's called Twas the Evening of Christmas, and it celebrates Jesus instead of Santa, you know, I'm not anti-Santa in any way, but that's just the way I like to frame that. And so she said, I'll take a peek at it. Twas the Evening of Christmas was born. And oh, my goodness, when I saw those illustrations, they're just staggering. And I'm super excited to be publishing Twas the Morning of Easter. Twas the Evening of Christmas begins, "Twas the evening of Christmas when all through the town, each inn was so crowded no room could be found." And so I just took that familiar cadence and rhythm and rhyme, and just rewrote it about being,

Terrie: Do you have the same illustrator for the Easter one?

Glenys: I do. Wait. The I've had a peek at them. They're just as stunning. They're just beautiful. And that one begins, "Twas the morning of Easter before the sun rose, two guards on a hillside were trying to doze."

Terrie: Oh, that's cute.

Glenys: Yeah. But her pictures are phenomenal, and I'll just let you in on a little secret that nobody else knows. And so truly only my husband and my publisher Zonderkidz know, but there is another book in the Twas series with the same illustrator, and that will be publishing this time next year.

Terrie: Oh, wonderful.

Glenys: I can't say anything else about it.

Terrie: Wow! You are a busy, busy person.

Glenys: I know. And you know what, honestly, I was taking part in a writer's conference last week. It was my first time being one of the headliners, and it was such a blessing. I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but one of the things I said was, "I honestly feel like God is the author, and I'm just along for the ride," you know, because I don't know. I just, I think we are all creative in some capacity where that you have the gift of writing or drawing, which I don't have that gift or creating art in whatever form, making things we all, because we're all made in God's image, we're all creators. And I just feel like I've been able to tap into the whole, I don't know that the creativity that the Holy Spirit just gives. And honestly, I just feel like a vessel. So when I sit down, right, I just prayed Holy Spirit flow through my pen. And let me write the words that will honor you. And it's just amazing. I don't know how I got so fortunate, so blessed to be in this position, but I do love what I do.

Terrie: One of the focuses of my podcast is the importance of reading aloud with our children, you know, to our children and with our children. Would you like to speak to that?

Glenys: Well, as you said, that is just so important and it's vital and it's key in all, you know, all the research about raising readers and literacy skills, reading aloud to them on with them is just foundational. And so what, what I would say to parents are any of your lessons, anyone out there listening, who, who were, who is nurturing the child, first of all, just enjoy it because my four kids, one of mine was a struggling reader. So you just don't want to get to the point where it's hard work or it's a chore. And so I think just to inspire that love of reading and a lot of looking at pictures, and if your children are little, just that interaction, you know, of having them cuddle with you on your lap or next to you and turning the page. I think some people might think that reading aloud to children, that's not helping them read, but that's not true because you were just setting the example and you're paving the way for children to enter a new world through a book, you know, so make it fun.

Do it as often as you can, don't be afraid to kids. Our favorite books, don't land parents might get a bit fed up with repeated that book, but just do it because just nurture that love of reading and read yourself, you know, children, see what we do on there. They're going to imitate what we do. And so the more we are readers, the more we will raise readers. Amen. Well, I would love to give one of your listeners. I'd love to get them with Little Mole's Christmas Gift.

Terrie: Oh, that would be wonderful.

Glenys: Yes. Since it's his birthday today. That would be appropriate to give that as a Christmas gift. And I'd look to, that would be a signed copy too that one of your readers could receive.

Terrie: So if you are interested in entering for an opportunity to win this beautiful little book, Little Mole's, Christmas Gift, you just need to comment on our blog post or on one of the announcements on social media about this giveaway. And every time you comment or ask a question, you're entered in the contest.

Glenys: And I should add that I'm only able to mail the book within the United States.

Terrie: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking time to talk with us today. It really was a blessing to get to talk with you and meet you a little bit. And I look forward to reading more of your books in the future and just ask that God will bless you and continue to inspire you to write these lovely, lovely books. Oh, well, thank you so much for having me.

Terrie: For those of you listening. Remember we have a giveaway. Glenys is giving away a signed copy of her brand new book that has a birthday today, that launches today. And that is Little Mole's Christmas Gift. Comment on this blog post or on one of the social media announcements about this giveaway, and you will be entered to win. We'll draw the winner the end of October, and announced the winner on November 1st.

Thank you for joining us for "Books that Spark," a podcast, celebrating books, that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Be sure to check out my website, TerrieHellardBrown.com. When you join my mailing list, you automatically receive access to several freebies just for those who sign up.

Your Host:

Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials. Her podcast, Books that Spark, is available each Tuesday morning. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com