Sparking Everyday Discipleship

In this episode we discuss forgiveness and some great books to help our children learn how to forgive and renew their friendships.

Remember our giveaway! Ends September 30.

Books Recommended 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.

We have so many values and lessons. We need to teach our children as they grow. And some important ones are forgiveness and reconciliation. Today. We're going to talk about what that means. And I think too many times in our society, we water down what we're really talking about when we're talking about forgiveness, because forgiveness, doesn't just stop at saying, "I'm sorry." --or especially if we have little children that cross their arms and roll their eyes and say, "I'm sorry," and don't really mean it, but that we're looking for a reconciled relationship where we're making it right, where we're healing, the relationship. And that's what forgiveness is all about. Granted, there are times when either a person does not want forgiveness and we choose to forgive for our own good. And for the good of the situation, there are also times of abuse where forgiveness means not reconciling, but keeping ourselves safe. And that's a whole different ball game. But on the day to day, every day lessons, we're teaching children, usually we're looking for forgivenness and reconciliation. And so I found some really great books that talk about forgiveness in a way that children can understand and grasp the whole concept in a really great way. And one book I really like is called: I Forgive You--Love We Can Hear, Ask For, and Give. I love the title and that's why I also love the book because it makes forgiveness very tangible. They give lots of examples in the book, and it's written by Nicole Lataif, illustrated by Katy. Betz. It's just very, very well written and describes forgiveness in such a way that children can really grasp it and hang onto it.

They use a lot of metaphor and analogy in a way that is very clear and gives very clear descriptions of what might need to be forgiven and what forgiveness means. And I love that it acknowledges that forgiving is hard and that sometimes it doesn't come instantaneously. I love that. It's a very authentic well-written book. I recommend it highly. And at the very beginning of the book, it has a section for grownups where it talks about forgiveness.

If we are truly forgiving people, it is one of the most difficult things we do as a Christian. It is not always easy. And sometimes we must forgive many, many times, not because the person has wronged us many, many times, hopefully, but because we keep bringing it back up in our own minds and replaying it over and over. We say forgive and forget, but we don't usually forget as much as we would like to. So, that's one of our failings as human beings.

This book has very colorful illustrations and the pictures are kind of lifelike; they're cartoonish, but the children can definitely see what's going on in the relationship between two children in the pictures. When it's talking about needing to ask for forgiveness and the illustrations show exactly what they're talking about. For instance, "God forgives you every time. He forgives you if you don't share, if you pull hair, if you throw a fit, if you choose to quit." And so this little boy is pulling this girl's hair. And then on the page, it says, "Wherever you go, whatever you do, you can hear an 'I forgive you.'" And then later on in the book, it says, "You can ask for an 'I forgive you.'" And then it says, "Wherever you go, whatever you do, you can say, 'I forgive you.'" So I like that. It has this little rhyming and sing-song, lyrical quality to it; a lot of the book rhymes, but not all of it. It's memorable. Children can think about needing to say, "I forgive you," needing to ask for forgiveness, for an "I forgive you." And then you go a little bit further and it says, "Wherever you go, whatever you do, make forgiveness part of you." So I love that it's also teaching children that forgiveness is a part of life, that they need to make that a part of life. And then one of my favorite analogies or images that they use says, "Not forgiving is like having an elephant in your heart. He grows and grows. He gets heavier and heavier until, 'Crack!' he breaks your heart." I think that is the most beautiful, concrete description I've ever seen of unforgiveness. And so it really can make it real to a child where they can grasp that. And I think that's exactly how unforgiveness feels. It just grows and grows. And the Bible warns us not to let a root of bitterness grow up in our hearts. And that's what unforgiveness will do. And it becomes the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. But the elephant in your heart, that is weighing you down. It says, "When we feed anger, it's like having a lion in your throat. Lion's roar. Roaring is scary. Speak calmly instead. Roaring hurts others, but it hurts you more. When you're mad, take a break, talk it through with someone who loves you. Forgive others as God does." Then it discusses some other things of how we can forgive. And I love, they also give you a section where it talks about "You don't have to forgive right away." Sometimes it takes you some time to work through your anger and to get to the point where you can forgive, but you don't want to just let it sit there and grow and break your heart. And it ends with a children's prayer, a simple prayer that we can pray with our kids.

It's just really well done and stays true to the word of God, stays true to what we should be doing in forgiving others and in asking for forgiveness. And I think it's so important today to really drive this home because our world is teaching that forgiveness is for our benefit, not the benefit of the other person, that when we forgive someone, it's basically just helping us to not carry that bitterness with us and not hurt ourselves. It's a very selfish notion when forgiveness is very selfless in its reality in truly forgiving someone, it's a selfless act, letting go of our desire for revenge, our desire to get even, and it's allowing God into the relationship and into the situation. A byproduct of forgiveness is that it does benefit us. We do feel a freedom when we let go, when we forgive. And a weight is lifted off of our heart and mind. And so that is true, but that is not the main reason behind forgiveness. The main thing behind forgiveness is us letting go so that God can work. When we forgive, we wind up not carrying the burden of bitterness. We don't let that root of bitterness spring up in our hearts. And we save ourselves a lot of pain and misery and illness that can result from unforgiveness. But I think it is so much more than that. True forgiveness is much, much more. True forgiveness is not playing God. And when we hold onto a grudge, we don't want to forgive someone, it's like, we want to hang onto it and have vengeance against the person. And it could mean that we just want to use it as a crutch to continue to be disobedient to God.

There's just so many nuances to unforgiveness, but forgiveness in its real form is a sacrifice. It's a letting go and letting God have control and letting God into the relationship and letting God have his way in my life and letting God have his way in that other person's life. If we are truly forgiving someone, we want them to be blessed. We want God to have his way in their life. And by that I don't mean that he's going to strike them down or that he's going to teach them what they did wrong, but that he has his way in their life. And that they become stronger--a stronger child of God--that they grow in the Lord and that they are fruitful and blessed and that he can have his way with them and use their life. It's understanding that we are not static beings that never grow and never change. If you think back over your life, and there's someone that you, when you were younger, you hurt them or they hurt you. And you've never fully reconciled with them. They're still stunted in our mind. We still think of them as in that same place. But in reality, we all have grown. We all have changed. Hopefully we've matured and grown up and changed. And God has worked in our lives to make us more like him. When we see that person, even if we've forgiven them, even if we've reconciled with them the best we could, we are still not that same person. And they are not still that same person. We've all grown. And so we need to let go, not only of what we held against that person, but recognize that we are all growing and we are all moving, hopefully closer to Christ-likeness in our walk with God and not see that person through the lens of whatever our disagreement was or whatever our hurt was and letting God not only forgive them and work in their life, but help us to see our relationship where it should be now and understand that we're not the same people we were when we hurt each other. And that's something that we don't talk about. We don't talk about these things a lot. We just talk about, "Say, I'm sorry. Say I forgive you." And we don't make it a heart issue with our kids.

I had one friend, actually my midwife, and I thought she was so wise. When her kids would disobey or they would hurt someone in their family, she would send them to their room until they were at a place where they were ready to truly ask for forgiveness. And so she didn't force it on them in the moment, which I see a lot of teachers, more teachers than parents, do. They want to try to reconcile too quickly when a child isn't quite there. So, she lets her children go alone by themselves and spend some time with God praying and getting their hearts to a place where they truly want forgiveness and reconciliation. I think that's really important.

I created a worksheet that will be in the show notes. If you would like to download it, feel free. It's a freebie. But it's what I've created to help with walking through reconciliation with an older child; this would be older elementary. If you were using it with a very young child--first of all, I think it would be too much for a very young child. They may not even be reading age. So this is definitely for a child who's reading age, who's able to write down a paragraph, who's able to process their feelings. But I wanted to make a worksheet that would help a child walk through the steps of reconciliation. And so they have a place where they can write what they need forgiveness for, what is their part in this disagreement or this problem. And then who do they need to confess to, who have they hurt? And then of course also confessing to God. And we talk about what, what a forgiveness is, repentance is, what reconciliation is, and what restitution is. And so these are all big words that we can help our children understand and then talk about it. So helping our child understand their need for repentance. It's not just an, "I'm sorry," it's a heart issue. Then also in the worksheet, what the other person did that needs forgiven. And they write that out, and then they choose to forgive them. Who do I need to forgive? And then at the end, it talks about reconciliation is our relationship okay now? Are we where we need to be? What else needs to happen? Is there restitution that needs to be made?" And I use the example of if you break your sister's toy, you may need to buy her a new toy or give her one of yours to make restitution. Now, maybe that isn't needed. Maybe she just forgave, and it's okay. But if there is something that is still between the two children that needs to be made, right, sometimes restitution does need to take place. And we need to teach our kids that and help them know that there are times that when they've done something wrong, they can make it better by action, as well as words. This worksheet, I hope, will help you if you want to use it. If you want to just have a look at it and use it as a jumping off point for how you want to talk to your kids, then that's there for your use however you want to use it.

So, we know that forgiveness is a powerful thing. It helps set us free from bitterness. It helps set us free from what we're holding onto that can hurt our hearts, but it sets them free from being held under our unforgiveness, from them having a burden that they don't need to bear either, so God can do his work in their lives. The other thing too is if we don't forgive, sometimes the other person is not even aware that they've hurt us because we've never talked to them about it. And so we've got to teach our kids--first of all, we've got to teach ourselves the reality of what forgiveness truly is and not buy into what the world says it is. But look at what the Bible says it is. Oh, and on that worksheet, I also have several Bible verses that you can use to teach about forgiveness, to memorize with your family about forgiveness. Reconciliation, and respect for people. Two of the key values we need to teach our children. It's the key to having successful marriages and other successful relationships. When we grow up and, you know, statistics have shown that people don't lose their jobs because they don't have skill in doing a job. They lose their jobs because they don't know how to have good relationships. They don't know how to cooperate with other people. They don't know how to reconcile when something has gone wrong. These life skills that we are discipling our kids with that we're, that we're helping our kids to grasp and build in their lives, it's not only helping them to be better children, it's helping them to grow into better and more successful adults. So these are very important and key things we need to teach. One of the key things that I always talk about when I'm talking about forgiveness is being able to ask God to bless the person. And so we want to get to that point.

Now, I found a couple other books that are really cute, and there are a lot of books about forgiveness. Some are written from a Christian perspective, some are not. These are not necessarily written from a Christian perspective, but they're cute. And I think they'll really drive home the idea of forgiveness and how we feel when we are angry and upset with someone. One of them is called Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse. You got to love the alliteration. And it's written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes. Lily is a little mouse, and she loves school. She loves her teacher, and she's decided she wants to be a teacher because her teacher is so wonderful. And then, one day it's show-and-tell, and she disturbs the class with what she's brought to show and tell, and her teacher gets onto her, and it makes her mad. Then she decides she doesn't like school. She doesn't like her teacher, and she never wants to be a teacher. She has this little fit. She writes these little stories and illustrates them. Her teacher sees what she's written and everything. And in the book, it shows how he reconciles with her and how her attitude then changes to wanting to be a teacher again. And I love the way the book takes us through her struggle with unforgiveness, with anger, and then how she reconciles with her teacher and how she then comes to a place where the relationship is actually stronger and better than it was before. I love that. And it's a really cute little book about her plastic purse. Her purple plastic purse makes noise, and that's how she disturbs the class.

The other one is such a funny book, and it's called Horrible Bear. And it's by Ame Dyckman and illustrated by Zachariah OHora. And if you've never read this book, it is so cute. But this little girl has a kite and it flies into the bears din and the bears hibernating he's sleeping. And so the kite breaks and she blames the bear for the kite braking. And so she goes around telling everybody horrible bear, he's a horrible bear. The bear gets really mad at her and she's a horrible girl, horrible girl. And then they wind up becoming friends and everything gets fixed, but so they both have their anger and angst at what happened. And now they're telling everybody else, which I think is important to talk about how we should never go around bad, mouthing other people. And then they reconcile and make things, right. It doesn't have a whole lot of words in it. So it would be good with talking with younger children and helping them to understand their emotions and how they feel and how they need to control that, and then be able to reconcile with someone.

Okay, I want to talk about one more silly book that you can use for fun. You can use it if you're homeschooling for a poetry unit that you're doing with your kids, or it definitely is a good one to use when talking about insincere confessions, you know, when someone is asking for forgiveness, but they really aren't sorry. So first you have to know the background. There's a poem by William Carlos Williams that's called "This Is Just to Say," and it says,

"I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox

and which you were probably saving for breakfast

Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold."

So, you can see that it's talking about when we're asking forgive for forgiveness, do we really mean it? And this goes along with the book called, Forgive Me. I Meant to Do It by Gail Carson Levine, and it's illustrated by Matthew Cordell. It's false apology poems. And this is for a little bit older kid, although you probably could read some of them to elementary, early elementary and they would still get it because it deals with fairytales and things. But it is so funny. Some of the allusions are to fairy tale stories that you know. And so they're false apology poems. And the first poem says, "this is just to say, my bulldozer has flattened the thorny hedge, which you mistakenly expected to sleep behind until the Prince came, forgive me, I'm charging tourists $10 to visit the castle." So in that poem, they knocked down the hedge where the sleeping beauty was hiding. And there's one from Jack and Jill, "you fell and cracked your skull on the Hill where I had carefully placed a banana peel. Forgive me, Jill is now my girlfriend." So he's stolen Jill from Jack and made Jack fall. There's one about the princess and the pea where she really knew the pea was there. She, sorry, not sorry sort of thing. They're all silly. They're all ridiculous. There's one about Jack and the Beanstalk. It says, "this is just to say, I have chewed through the tall beanstalk, which you recently stepped off way up there. Forgive me. I think I'm worth more than five magic beans." And of course, it's the cow who's falsely apologizing and chews down the beanstalk because she's been sold for five magic beans. So, with these poems, you can talk about, "Are you really sorry? Or are you just saying, you're sorry? Do you really want forgiveness? Or are you really not so sorry that you did what you did." And so we talk about the heart issue and make it a little bit more serious than probably it needs to be at times.

But with these poems, we can approach a very heavy subject in a funny way and help our children to really examine their hearts without them feeling like we're shaking our finger at them. So, I hope some of these books will be enjoyable with your kids and that you can enjoy tackling a very important subject, but in an entertaining way that opens up some good conversations.

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. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of this podcast and my blog. My website is terriehellardbrown.com. When you join my mailing list, you automatically have several freebies that you can download and enjoy with your kids.

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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this episode we take a fun look at ABC books, phonemes, and discuss ministering through language exchange.

We're also doing a giveaway! Three winners will receive my favorite ABC book! Comment on my blog to be entered to win. Each comment or question posted will give you another entry. Deadline for entries is September 30, 2020.

Recommended in this episode:

Lesson Plan Using Avaricious Aardvarks

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. September is literacy month. And so I thought I would go over, especially with school starting, and talk about some of my favorite alphabet books. Now, some I've talked about in other episodes, such as the P Is for Pterodactyl book: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever written by Raj Halder and Chris Carpenter; illustrated by Maria Tina Beddia. And of course, in that we're talking about all the words that have silent letters in them. And so it's the letters that are at the beginning of words that do not make a sound. And I think it's a great book for your older students; for the younger students who are strong readers and who are interested in words, that one would be a good one.

Another one I've mentioned before is A Is for Salad, which is written and illustrated by Mike Lester. And in this one, the picture shows something that relates to the letter shown, but the words don't match. A is for salad, shows an alligator eating a salad. So of course the A is actually for alligator. And so this one is good for the children who already know their alphabet and are wanting to have some fun with that. Another one is called Z Is for Moose. It's by Kelly Bingham and illustrated by Paul Zelinsky. And it is such a cute book and tells a story. This moose, he wants to be in the alphabet book too soon. He gets on the wrong page. And then when they finally get to M, they decide to go with mouse instead of moose. And so he's crying, and it's just, it's really cute. So, that's another fun one. And then one of my favorites--it's kind of an older book--is called Avaricious Aardvarks and Other Alphabet Tongue Twisters by Sandy Sheppard illustrated by Joel Bower. It's an A-to-Zany Look at God's Creatures. It's a really cute little book, and I love it for the alliteration. It's all about animals, and every page is a tongue twister to have fun with language and with the alphabet. For instance, it says, "Avaricious aardvarks antagonize anxious ants," "Big Brown baboons buy bananas by the bunch." So of course, this is not going to be your A is for Apple, B is for boy, C is for cat type of book. This is going to be for a little bit older child, and it's a lot of fun. And especially if you have them practice saying these tongue twisters and learn them as tongue twisters and see how fast they can say them or how fast they can read the page. Then it can be a lot of fun.

If you're working with ESL students, then this is even more fun because tongue twisters are so hard when you're learning a language. I used to try to learn Chinese tongue twisters. Oh my goodness. Those are so hard because the tongue twisting is partially the tone. It may have the same word in the tongue twister over and over and over like ma ma ma ma ma, you know, and you're just changing the tones. There's one about teachers and lions, and it's crazy. But anyway, the C for this one is "Creeping, crawling crocodiles, constantly create concern" or "Dehydrated dromedaries don't drink daintily." And so these words are going to be a little more involved. If you were using this book to teach language, you could also use it because in each one you have adverbs adjectives, a noun, and a verb.

So each one is a sentence, for instance, "Friendly frogs, frolic friskily for fun." So you have "friendly," which is your adjective; "frogs," which is your noun; "frolic" is your verb, "friskily" is your adverb; and "for fun" would be your prepositional phrase. In this one, you can teach alliteration, you can teach grammar for different words, what they are, the noun, verb, adjective adverb, plus you're teaching pronunciation and fun with language with your tongue twisters. And so in they're all animals in this book that they talk about. And it starts out with a little poem in the front. It says, "Curious beasts from a to Z, fill the earth, the sky, the sea, they jump and fly and swim and crawl. God our Father made them all." So I like that. This book is not overtly Christian in the sense that every page talks about God, but at least it starts that way.

If you're not a believer and you don't want to talk about God, this is still a great book because of all the ways you can use it to teach grammar, to teach English pronunciation and to have fun with alliteration. Plus the words are big enough that you can also pull out a whole vocabulary list from this one book to teach your kids to expand their vocabulary. So I love books like that, that I can use for several different purposes within my lesson plan. And I mean, you could have it come into an art lesson and have them draw animals. If you wanted to, you could even bring in lessons across the curriculum, but certainly you can with your grammar and your English language lessons, use a book like this for vocabulary and everything that you're working on.

In addition to these, if you, and I've mentioned this before, if you join my mailing list, you have access to three different phoneme books that I created. I do not sell these books. I only give them away. I made three of them. One is more geared toward children who enjoy construction and tools and science, and it's called The Little Toolbox of Phonemes. And then there's one geared toward the girly girls among us who like pink and purple and glitter and dressing up. And then there's one that is full of coloring pages for you, and it tells the different stories of Jesus. And we go through the phonemes. You'll print these out and fold the paper in half lengthwise and laminate. And then after you laminate them, you can take them to one of the print shops and have them put one of those spiral connectors at the top of the pages. So the book flips open that way. It's just unique. It's long and thin and fun. I originally made one for my son, and in the front cover I actually put "A book for Nathaniel made by mom with lots of love." You can, because you can print these out, if you want to make your own title page or whatever, feel free to do that and make the book your own because this is something that's just a gift for you to use with your children.

Now, if you don't know what phonemes are, phonemes are the sound that the letters make. So it may be one letter. It may be two letters. It may be five, let's see, O-U-G-H, four letters I think is the longest one I have is the OUGH phoneme. And the OUGH phoneme has six sounds: /Oh/, /ooh/, /uf/, /off/, /ah/, /ow/. And so with each one, we're saying all of the sounds that that letter or that group of letters makes. So for a, instead of just saying /a/, /a/, /a/, /a/, we do /a/, /ay/, /ah/, /uh/ because the letter a in English can say /a/ as in Apple; /ay/ as in ate, like ate an apple or ape; /ah/ as in tall; /uh/ as in the a word. When we have a as a word, we normally don't say I saw a bunny. We say, I saw a bunny. When we teach a, we teach all four sounds. And typically in the classroom, I teach them in the order of the most frequent sound. The most frequent sound for an a in English is /a/, second is /ay/, than is /ah/, and fourth is /uh/. But for your purposes, you're just having fun and helping your children to know when they see an a, these are the sounds it makes. So as you're doing these phoneme books, as you print them out, this will take you through most of the most common phonemes. If you have children who are in first, second, third grade, I would print the whole book for them. If you have little bitty kids who are in their fours and fives or threes, fours, and fives, you might want to just print the part that's the 26 letters and not go into the two letter and up to four letter phonemes. I have the whole one letter alphabet with the phonemes, you know, up in the front part of the book. And then later on, I go into the vowel digraphs in the SH, CH, TH digraphs. And so these phonemes are in there, but you don't have to go that far. You can choose for your child, what is appropriate for their age and print the whole thing and just go over the first part, or just print part of the book. It's up to you. Like I said, this is a gift to you. Use it how you would like. I did the one with the coloring pages because I thought it would be fun for the kids to be able to color the book. And then you have it laminated and put it together. So now it's not just a special book Mom made for me, it's a special book that I helped color and create as well, which is kind of fun. So that, like I said, is available. You have three to choose from. I may do some more in the future if people really like them. But they are a lot of fun to go over. And I really feel like it helps equip a child to read and to begin to understanding letters and what they do. Then, if you're going through a book and your child is trying to read the words and they try to sound it out with an /a/, and it doesn't quite work or more commonly with a C, if they say the C with an S sound, and it's supposed to be a k sound, then you can simply say, "What's another sound that C makes?" And they'll automatically know, "Oh, it can say K."

And so then they try it and the word makes sense. I get that a lot with G as well with the /g/, /j/ sound. And so if they say the wrong sound and you have them try it with the other sound, and then they're sounding it out. My children started reading early in life. My youngest started reading at about age three, and we did not teach him. I feel like I didn't teach any of my kids to read. I did teach them phonics, and I did teach them phonemes. And through that, they taught themselves to read. And before I knew it, they were reading books. Of course, we read books to them all the time. And so they would pick up words along the way, I'm sure, but reading was never a chore. It was a joy with my kids. That was always a positive thing. And they fell in love with reading books. And the wonderful thing about alphabet books, ABC books, is you can find one to match just about any interest your child may have. There's one for the alphabet of words from art. There's one about tennis pros out there. If you want to talk about women's history, there's one about amazing women. I did one for my son with Star Wars words and there actually are two different ones I found one had to do with Star Wars, and one had to do with Marvel comics. So those are out there as well. The one I did for my child, I just did on my own. I didn't even know there was one. And so I have a lot of fun with those. And, let's see, what else did I see construction work.

If we're not careful, a lot of our books exclude little boys. And with the alphabet books, you see alphabet books that include boys and girls and help them both to find things they love and read about those. And one really cute book that's out there, if you like Eric Carl and his artwork, it's a very simple book, but it has flaps, and it opens up and it's his artwork. So there's the Eric Carl ABC book, but there's so many to choose from. And they're just great and help, like I said, help you to teach your kid to read without really teaching them to read, helping them just to fall in love with letters sounds, and then let them start to put those together. The other thing that I sometimes do with phonemes is show them in different places within a word. So not every time is the word going to begin with the letter that we're talking about. Sometimes we need to teach some words where the letter comes at the end or in the middle of the word. Even if the alphabet book isn't teaching that or your phoneme book, isn't teaching that, be aware of that and take the opportunity to show other words that have the letter in them, because then the child can begin to recognize those sounds in the midst of the word and start being able to put words together.

We have to be really careful. One of the things I'm sorry, I'm in teacher mode here, but if you're a homeschool mom, maybe you'll appreciate this. When you're teaching phonemes, be careful not to add extra vowels. For instance, when we're talking about B and in this particular book that I had for my son, it says, "B is for battery." And so we don't say, "B, /buh/, /buh/, /buh/" or "B /ba/, /ba/, /ba/." We say that B, B, you want to cut it short? And then that way, when you're showing, showing a child a for instance, C A T, and they do, eh, they can start to hear cat. But if you say Cuh Ah Tuh, then they start seeing cuh-at-tuh, and they can't get the sounds put together correctly. So you want to keep it short. And that sometimes is very hard to do, especially with R, that one's always a difficult one /r/, /r/, /r/ and then the rabbit, and they want to do /ruh/,/ruh/,/ruh/ beause that's easier to say, or LA LA and just to do /l/, /l/. You can also use ladder drills and you can get these through A Beka. They're wonderful. A Beka is a publisher that does homeschool materials, and they have these ladder drills, and you can find them from others as well. But I've always used A Beka's. I also make my own just to have them handy, but they take the letters and put the different vowel sounds to them. So for "B" you would have a ladder that has /ba/, /beh/, /bi/, /baw/, /buh/. Then I have my students do the long vowel, sounds: /bay/, /be/, /by/, /bo/, /boo/, or /byew/. And so we practice putting the sounds together that way very quickly, they will teach themselves to read. One of the things I did when I taught kindergarten is I would not try to teach them to read. I only taught phonemes and phonics. They would start reading on their own. And it's a wonderful way to teach reading because the student doesn't feel pressure. They don't feel like they're competing, and they're just naturally start to pick up the language and pick up reading on their own. And it's like, all of a sudden this light bulb comes on, and the words start making sense, or the letters start making sense. They start realizing they're words. So, as a rule, when I'm teaching kindergartners, I do not push reading. I do try to help them learn their alphabet, learn their phonics, the basic phonics. And then we try to move into phonemes. With the basic alphabet I teach phonemes from day one. And then when they get into first grade, if they haven't started reading on their own or toward the end of kindergarten, if they haven't started wanting to read, or haven't tried to read on their own, then I might push it a little bit, try to encourage them a little bit. Sometimes see if there's some sort of a learning disability, if they're not hearing well or seeing well, or if the letters are flipping on them, that will start to become obvious, pretty close to right away--at the beginning of trying to teach.

But I just wanted to let you know, these books are there for you. And all you do is sign up for my mailing list. Of course you can cancel at any time, but on my mailing list, I'm not doing a newsletter just yet. I plan to start that in the future, and that would be once a month. And at that point, I'll probably give you the option to choose which mailing list you want to be on. But right now I just have one mailing list, and you get two to three emails a week telling you when I've posted an episode on my podcast, when I've posted a blog post on my blog, and if we have a contest or whatever, I do have also some posts that go out just to my mailing list. They are not available on my website and are just talking about discipleship and growing in our faith. Those are kind of like my blog posts, but they're special just for my mailing list members. And so you'll also get those, but it's not an everyday email. And I try not to pester you too much. I just want to bless you, give you materials and resources that you can use with your children, whether you're homeschooling or not. If you're just reading to them each evening or going over their homework together--tools that you can use. And then also to challenge us as we're growing in our faith. That's one thing when I was a young mom that I missed was just being encouraged in my faith. Life is so hectic when you have little kids around and to stop just for a minute and read a short blog post that hopefully will encourage you and challenge you in your growth and in your relationship with God, you know, that's my heart. And so that's what I send you, and I hope it blesses you.

If English is your child's second language, these phoneme books can just be lifesavers for them and really help them to grow in their English language ability and help you to grow as well. If it's a second language for you, many times, I feel such a burden for the parent of a child, who if they've come to America, they're learning English. The child learns English at school. The dad usually learns English at work, but if the mom is staying at home with little kids, she doesn't get to learn English as well because she's too busy being a mom and just keeping life running and adapting to a new culture. And I think I have such a heart for this because that's what happened in our family. In Taiwan, my husband learned Chinese. He took classes. Plus he was in the workplace where he was having to use his Chinese all the time. And my kids who went to Chinese school are completely bilingual. They can read and write and speak Chinese. And then my two older kids who went to English schools--they went to a missionary school and they were home-schooled--they did not learn as much, but they learned some from their Sunday school teachers and from other people. But I tried to learn, and I just didn't have time. And I say, I mostly entertain people with my Chinese at this point. I understand a whole lot more than I can speak, but it is really hard for me to have the courage to even speak what little bit I know, because I mess up the tones, and my kids correct me all the time. But as a mom, you just don't get the opportunity like the others who are out in the marketplace, in the schoolyard, you know, learning the language. So I have a real heart for helping moms learn the language when they're new to the U S. And so I used to teach ESL, before COVID, at our church for women and men who needed to learn. And I would love to get back to that as soon as COVID is over. If not, I'm going to have to start it online, I guess. But if you are in that boat, if you are a parent, and you just don't have the opportunity to learn as much English and would like to learn more, or better yet, you probably know someone like that, probably they aren't listening to this podcast. I have resources that would be good for them. I can share what I would recommend to help them learn English.

If you would like to facilitate their learning, I can give you some materials or some ideas of materials that could help you. But the best thing you can do, if you know someone in that situation is to be their friend. You can do a language exchange with them. We used to do this in Taiwan all the time. What you do is get together once a week with that mom and do a one-on-one is best and have tea or coffee. And you just sit and visit for a while. But then for like 30 minutes, you share English with them. And for 30 minutes they teach you their language. So it's reciprocal. They don't feel obligated then to pay you for teaching them English because they're helping you learn their language. And it is so much fun. It will help you to learn a little bit of their language, their culture. It opens the door for you to have conversations about your faith and their faith, parenting, and marriage, and all of those important things that we just want to talk about and share with each other and have a confidant that we can talk to.

If you can imagine, when you go to a new country, not only are you learning the culture and the language, you've left behind your family and your friends, and finding new friends is not always easy. Being able to trust someone is not always easy. If you can partner with one of these ladies and let them know that you just would love to learn their language and you could help teach them your language. You're able to work on pronunciation because you're there in a one-on-one situation. It just becomes a wonderful time. We've had the blessing of being able to really get to know someone from another culture, to experience their culture and their language, and to just be there for someone, I would highly encourage you to seek out the people in your neighborhood, in your child's school, who might enjoy a partnership like that.

One of the main books I discussed in this episode is Avaricious Aardvarks and Other Alphabet Tongue Twisters. And this book is out of print. Like I said, it was an older book, but I have found some copies that I can get. And so I've decided to do a giveaway because, of all the ABC books I could find, it's one of my favorites, and I just feel like I should share the joy. So if you are interested in entering our giveaway, please make a comment on my blog post or one of the episode posts on my website at TerrieHellardBrown.com, and you will be automatically entered in the giveaway. You have between now and the end of September to enter. For each time that you post a comment, you will be entered again into the drawing, so you can increase your chances of winning by commenting more and more. If you have any questions about the ESL information that I mentioned for starting a language exchange with a neighbor or a friend, just email me, or, again, post it in the comments, and I'll be happy to share with you what I've learned over the years with that. 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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this episode I interview author Jennifer Grant, and we talk about her three children's books and her five books for adults. We also talk about sparking spiritual curiosity through the books we read with our children.

Thursday her newest book A Little Blue Bottle launches. Be sure to check it out!

Books recommended in this episode:

Our guest today: Jennifer Grant http://www.jennifergrant.com/

Transcript:Terrie: Welcome to Books that Spark, a podcast for parents and caregivers where we review books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and conversations leading to teachable moments with our kids.

Thank you for joining us today. I'm excited to welcome our guest, author Jennifer Grant. Jennifer is the author of books for adults and children's picture books. Her book Maybe God Is Like That Too won a gold medal from the Moonbeam Spirit Awards for excellence in children's literature and was named a book of the year finalist in the Forword Indies awards. Her second picture book, Maybe I Can Love My Neighbor Too, has been named a Junior Library Guild official gold standard selection. Her third book for children, A Little Blue Bottle, launches tomorrow and is now available for purchase from your favorite bookseller. Jennifer has also written for publications including Woman's Day, Chicago Parent, Patheos, and her.meneutics. For more than a decade, she wrote features, restaurant profiles, and general interest columns for Sun-Times Media newspapers. She also was a health and family columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Thank you so much for being here on the program today, Jennifer, and for letting us be a part of your book launch today.

Jennifer: Well, you're welcome. I'm happy to talk with you today. Okay.

Terrie: First of all, we have to talk about your slogan that you use on your flyers and has kind of been your vision for the ministry that God's given you. It says, "Picture books, that spark spiritual curiosity. And I love that. And especially because of the podcast that we do called Books that Spark; it's like we're on the same wavelength.

Jennifer: Yeah. I'll tell you kind of how sort of how I came up with that little tagline. When I was raising my own kids who are now 18, 20, 22 and 24, I loved reading them books, and I read them books all the time. And I also though found that some of the books that were written from a Christian context were not their favorite books. And I really wanted them to have engaging and wonderful Christian books, but unfortunately some of them just felt really preachy. And of course, as we know, kids spend a lot of time being instructed not to do this and to do this. And they get a lot of schooling and all of that. And so, books that were presenting ideas of God, but also had this sort of, you know, slap you on the wrist sort of tone were not books that they really connected with.

And so when I started a few years ago, turning my attention toward really developing my skills as a writer for children, I thought, "Oh, it would be such a privilege to write Christian books for kids that they actually were really engaged with and that they wanted to read it again and again, and that would invite them to pose their own questions about who God is or about how to be a person who's in tune with their spirit" and so on. And so that little tagline that I came up with was just the books that I write that have spiritual content, I hope will spark spiritual curiosity and get them in conversation with God and with themselves about God's creation or how they see God in the world and help them use their imaginations to kind of connect with God in that way.

Terrie: That's wonderful. Sometimes when I'm writing a story, the first time I write it, I feel like, "Oh my goodness, this is coming across as so preachy." And I go back through and totally redo it. Because it's the same thing, I want our kids to delight in God and his word and how awesome he is. You have two picture books out already that I just love. Would you like to talk about those first? And then we'll move to the new one that's coming out tomorrow. Tell us about the Maybe God Is Like That Too.

Jennifer: That was my first one for kids, Maybe God Is Like That Too. And basically, the way that came about was that I had been doing some kind of editing and writing work for a publisher already and had not published my own book with them. And apparently in a, probably an editorial meeting or one of their meetings, they decided that they thought it would be great to have a new children's book about the fruit of the spirit. And so, at that point, I'd already done a few projects and contributed to anthologies that they had. And they came to me and said, would you be willing to write anything you want, any kind of story, but that kind of delved into the fruit of the spirit and what those verses mean. And I was so excited. I felt really honored to have that opportunity. And so, I kind of started that process by looking at what other books about the fruit of the spirit looked like.

And there were a lot that looked similar, at least the ones that I came across that would have like a fruit bowl on a bright kitchen table and a parent, you know, sort of again, sort of preaching to the little kids, sitting there about the fruit of the spirit. So, I was thinking, how can I really approach this in a fresh way? And in a way that kids might find more engaging? And so, the story is a grandmother and her little grandson whom she's raising. And I don't go into it in the book, why he's being raised by his grandmother. But she, he says, he's never seen God. And like, where's God, I see people. And how can, how can I see God? Or where is God? And I remember that being a question that I asked when I was little thinking, you know, we talk about God all the time. We pray to God. We say, we want to please God, but where is God? You know, I don't see, I don't see God. And so, in this book, the grandmother just suggests to him that, you know, when you seek God's spirit at work, that's a way to seek God. And so, he goes through his day and he experiences joy, and he thinks, "Oh, maybe God is like that too." And he exhibits self-control by not getting out of bed at the end of the day. And he thinks, "Oh, maybe God is like that too." And what's been so fun is that when I've read this book to preschools and like, I've gone to a couple like parochial schools and done chapels and stuff like that, what's funny is with that refrain, maybe thought is like that too. That repeats several times in that book. It's such a joy to see the kids who are all sitting around on the floor, trying to look at the illustrations and so on. And some of them each time I say, maybe God is like that too. Inevitably, there'll be one kid who says no. And again, that's having that response seems just as fitting as if somebody goes, "Oh yeah, maybe God is like that too." Because again, if we're inviting spiritual curiosity, it means the kids can have their own independent responses to this and their own thoughts about what God might be like. So that was the first one.

And then the one that is in the same series, and it has different characters, but we actually chose to have some of the characters sort of show up in the background in some of the spreads. But the second book is Maybe I Can Love My Neighbor Too. And so, it's also in the same sort of cityscape and it is a little girl who is considering how can she love her neighbor when there's so many neighbors? And she's again, like sort of trying to find her place in the world and trying to figure out how she can do that. How can I love my neighbors? And so, she goes through the day kind of observing how other people are showing love to each other and learning. And the kind of end of that book is that everyone is our neighbor and we can show them where my hope with that one was just kids would be exposed. The idea that everyone is our neighbor, but also exposed to the idea that they can do little things during the day they can have agency and they can do little things that do very successfully show love to others. And, you know, kind of, it puts them squarely in the center of the story. Like how can I love my neighbor? So that's the second one,

Terrie: I love both of those. And I gave both books to my nieces and nephews because I felt like it did make a relationship with God and an understanding of God as concrete as we possibly can, you know, to really make it relatable. And, and then, like you said, to give them the ability to act and to make a conscious decision, to try to bless others and help others by being a good neighbor. I love both those books. I think it just brings the gospel alive for kids in such a concrete way. It's brilliant.

I want to go ahead and talk about the new book coming out Thursday, 9/17, is the launch date for A Little Blue Bottle. I love the other two books, but this one to me is so needed today. I don't know of any other books that approach the subject of grief, like your book does. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jennifer: The book has been on my mind for years, you know, I've only been publishing books for kids for the last three or four years, but prior to that, I really wanted to, and I was always jotting ideas and, and working on different stories. But in 2012, after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, I have had a number of conversations with a close friend who lives in that area of Connecticut. Her children ended up having to go to a number of funerals for the children who died in their school. And she and I both are lovers of children's literature. And so, I asked her if there were any books that she really connected with that were helpful, like picture books, about grief. And she said she really hadn't found anything that was, that was helpful to her, her family. And so, I kept thinking about that and thinking, you know, kids experience grief.

We tend to, I mean, I know I do. We can sometimes sort of idealize what a child's experience is. And we forget that kids, you know, lose a pet and they grieve that disappointment. I mean, in the current climate, you know, kids are experiencing the grief of not being able to be with their grandparents or with people that they love, or they're missing out on opportunities that they had expected, like maybe summer camps or things like that. So, we kind of forget sometimes how much pain kids can really carry throughout their lives. So my hope was that I would write a story that would invite kids to sort of sit with their feelings and have the feelings that they have, and also to kind of give parents the opportunity to read this story to their children. Maybe that will open a conversation and maybe reading this one story will help a child say, "Yeah, I feel sad sometimes too."

And the underlying spiritual message in it, which is, you know, that central picture of the little blue bottle is that there's a verse in the Bible that says that God collects our tears. And so, I love the idea of suggesting to kids, "Hey, we're not saying this book like, Oh, well, if you love God, you'll never experience pain. Or if, if you love God, you won't ever lose anyone," but it's, it makes the very strong suggestion that God is with us and cares when we're suffering. And so, when I sat down to write this, this book, I didn't want to write about, you know, a terrible trauma or a terrible event, like Sandy Hook. I really wanted to give a story that could be relatable to a little kid, but not traumatizing. And so, it's the story of a little girl whose elderly neighbor passes away. And so, and she deals with the loss of that friend. So yeah, I'm excited about it. I know it's, it's a time where kids are really grieving a number of things. And my hope is that it will be a comfort to them.

Terrie: That's what I was so impressed about was that I felt like you handled this whole subject without over-dramatizing, without making it traumatic, but also acknowledging the reality. It seems to me what books I have seen that deal even a little bit with grief, either trivialize it, or don't really handle the subject with the same kind of care that I saw in this book. And I feel like I could recommend this book to anyone, to read with their children, to help them process the loss of a pet or a loved one or a neighbor, or even like you said, the grief of just what's going on in our culture and how that's upsetting children. This book could even be a help for helping children to process those feelings. I love where the mom, where the mom is just sitting with her daughter on the porch and she doesn't need to say anything. She just needs to be with her. That's so often what we need when we're grieving. And I just, I just felt like it was such a balanced handling of this whole topic. I think it's wonderful.

Jennifer: Well, and I did try to, I wanted to make sure I'm not, you know, I'm not a therapist or a psychologist, and I wanted to make sure that the messaging in this book was helpful and appropriate. And at the end of the book, you know, there's a page of best practices of how you can help a child who's grieving. I was really rigorous and doing research on that. And I really think he came to 24 people that I, people who work with kids as therapists and counselors and so on. And I had them read it and offer their suggestions because I really wanted to get that element right. You know, I didn't want to be giving bad advice or any advice that would further hurt a child, but just anyway, so those, those best practices I hope will be helpful as well.

Terrie: How important do you feel that it is that we read to our children?

Jennifer: Oh, well, I am very passionate about this. I think it's so important. I mean, from the earliest days when we read to kids, you know, we were not only helping them develop literacy and their vocabularies and all of those good things in terms of their academic learning and so on, but we're really teaching them, you know, about the world and about the world with the Maybe books. I think about those books as being kind of presenting a world, as I wish it were, you know, I wish everyone always helping their neighbor. And I wish that little kids were looking in and seeing God's presence and the people around them and so on. But yeah, so both, I think both in terms of brain development, obviously, it's so important to read to kids and it also provides like a lovely break. You know, I remember when I was a mother of really young kids, you know, you're so on all the time, you know, you're keeping them safe and giving them the food they need and all that.

And I always loved the moments where we were just sitting on the couch, and I was reading a big stack of picture books because someone else had done the care of creating these beautiful illustrations and wonderful stories. And I could just sort of be the person sharing this with the kids. And so, it was a time that felt like a real break for me as a busy young mom, I'm happy to say all my kids did turn out to be readers. And that was like your goal that I had when I had my kids. And yeah, it's, I just think it creates a time to connect and to, you know, writing picture books. As I, whenever I'm working on a manuscript, I love picturing a child sitting on an adult's lap, you know, a teacher, a parent, a grandparent, a neighbor, you know, whoever's reading this book, it's such an intimate and beautiful time of connection when you're reading to a kid. So yes, I think it's super important.

Terrie: And how does it help with their spiritual development?

Jennifer: Again, as we were saying, like, depending on the books, you know, we choose for them, it can be, you know, writing about like I have, I have some books that will be coming out in a few years or over the next few years that are board books for really young kids, they're educational board books. And I based them on the verses that say, like consider the lilies of the field. And, but I present colors in that context. And I like kind of opening a conversation, you know, not saying here's how you should feel about God or here's how you should behave. But instead saying, Hey, what happens when we slow down and look at a beautiful flower? What should we learn about God as a creator when we, when we notice and we observe and yeah, so spiritually they can be books can invite kids to pray, invite kids to connect with God on their own terms, can point out the wonders of nature. They can definitely play an important role, just like they do the adult books we read that have spiritual content, you know, affect our spiritual development as well.

Terrie: Well, tell us a little bit about your other books since I have you here. Cause I know you have quite a few that are not children's books. Can you tell us a little bit about those?

Jennifer: Yeah, sure. So, I've written five books for adults and some of them are well, the first one was a book called Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter and my youngest child. I have four kids and the youngest one was adopted when she was a toddler and she was born in Guatemala, and that's that book is mostly memoir, but it also kind of delve into issues around adoption and international adoption. And it's a book that, that really is primarily memoir, but tells our family story.

And then the second book that I wrote was also kind of family and parenting related. I used to be a parenting columnist for a newspaper. And so, I love doing that kind of work, especially when my kids were little, it gave me the chance to reflect on, you know, all the stress and the joys of raising little kids. But so, the second book is also a family-related book and it's called MOMumental and ventures and the messy art of raising a family. And in that book, it's a lot of family stories, but also kind of, I go topically through some things that I think are helpful in terms of things to think about when you're creating a family culture and raising kids.

And then my next book, I'm trying to make sure I'm getting them in order. I have a devotional book called Wholehearted Living, which is a 365-day book. And it's all short readings of about 200 words for all the days of the year. And that book is sort of organized around different themes. And so, there's a part of the year that the readings are about reflection. And one part of the year is about risk. And one part of the year is about rest. People are like, Oh, that's so nice. Those short readings. And I want to say, Oh my goodness, that was the hardest book that I've had to re to write. It's really difficult to write short and also to do a 365 or it's actually 366 because of leap year.

And then I have a book that's an anthology [Disquiet Time] that I co-edited with my friend and the spiritual writer, Cathleen Falsani, and we invited about 42 people. And they're people from all over the map in terms of their, their sort of flavor of Christianity. And actually a few of the contributors are not, don't identify as Christian pastors and influencers and writers and speakers. And they, we invited them to choose a verse or a passage from the Bible that they either love and it makes, you know, it makes them kind of encouraged and generates a lot of energy for them, or it's a passage that they wish weren't in the Bible or a passage that makes them laugh or something that troubles them. And each person wrote a personal narrative dealing with whatever that verse or passage was. So, some of the chapters, I mean, it's, it's very, it's quite vulnerable. Like some of the chapters are very vulnerable and we've got so many people saying, you know, words of thanks that they hadn't been asked to be so transparent with their thinking, but we are in the introduction or in the foreword, I guess. We say, you know, God can take, it can take our questions and if we feel unsettled by a part of scripture, we're allowed to articulate that. And so that, that book really does that.

And then my most recent book for adults is called, When Did Everybody Else Get So Old? And it's a it's a midlife memoir. And so it, it basically is a memoir told an essays and they go through sort of from my 40th birthday to approaching 50, these essays are about things that I think are fairly commonly events in the lives of people in his life for those who are parents, you know, their kids are growing older, our own parents are aging and there's issues around that. And we deal often with a friend or someone else who's close to us who dies. And so, these essays kind of delve into commonly experienced events in midlife. So, I was my most recent one.

Terrie: I have to ask you, what was your favorite picture book as a child and why?

Jennifer: Well, my very favorite is the story of Ferdinand. And I don't know if you know that one about Ferdinand, the bull. Yeah. Actually, I have it on my desk. I have a bunch of, you know, one of the joys of writing for kids is that I can justify buying picture books and I have them all over. But yeah, I actually have my original copy, which was given to me in 1971. So, I was born in '67. So yeah, I was a very little girl when I received this and it's, it's just, I always just loved that book. And I would stare at all the really simple sort of pen and ink illustrations, but there's something. So even the way the animals look at each other or like the butterfly and Ferdinand, it's just, I found it so compelling. And I loved his, you know, he was kind of a fish out of water. He was supposed to be a vicious bull, but really he just wanted to smell the flowers. And I think I connected with that, but another book that I actually I have on my desk right now, too, that I really loved reading to my kids and they all loved Ferdinand too, but a book I didn't discover until I was a young mom is called Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch. I don't know if you know

Terrie: That one, that one, I don't, I'll have to read that one.

Jennifer: It's terrific. So, Ferdinand written by Munro Leaf and that one's, you know, sort of a classic that everyone knows, but this one, somebody loves you. Mr. Hatch is written by Eileen Spinelli and the pictures are Paul Yalwitz. It's about a lonely man who receives a wonderful gift. And it's, I won't spoil the story for you, but it's a great it's a great Valentine's gift to give to kids this book, but it's, it's really about community and love and, and what happens when you're kind to someone.

So anyway, I love that one to you. How can we support you more in your work and in your ministry? Oh, well, thank you. Well, I would say for all authors, one way that if you have a book that you love or an author who you want to support, it does actually really help to go on Amazon and to good reads and to read books. So, like, you know, whether or not it's mine, if anyone's listening and they think, Oh, well, I, I love Ferdinand or I love whatever book you just finished this summer. Sometimes we forget that that actually adding, you know, if you go on Amazon and add stars or add a little review, it actually changes sort of the algorithm. Cause it's so hard to there's so many books being published all the time that it's kind of hard to rise above the noise sometimes.

So, all the different ones. So, if you really love a book or an author, it's fabulous to go online and give them readings on, you know, Barnes and Noble or Amazon or Good Reads. And sometimes I, I used to, and I think I'm gonna just, you brought this to my mind. So, I think I'll add this to my calendar, but I used to spend, you know, it only takes 10 minutes, right. So, I would spend like 10 minutes every Friday doing that for the books that I really love both by people. I know, but also just if I happen to finish a book and thought, Oh, I just love this. Sometimes we forget. So that's one way to support authors. And then yeah. If any, anyone listening can look online and look on Amazon or reach out to your local bookseller and look for A Little Blue Bottle.

Another thing that's helpful. And I ask people who are my sort of close friends and, and writing colleagues is that if you love a book and I'd love it, if people did this for A Little Blue Bottle, going to the website of your local library and requesting that book is a wonderful way to get the book into a library so that a lot of kids can enjoy it. You know, it just finds its readers. That's of course what we're always doing as writers, it's trying to connect with their readers. So, I think, especially for children's books, I love it. When people tell me that they've called their local library or emailed them and said, Hey, you should carry this book. Cause I love the idea of some kid just sort of running their fingers along the top of a row of picture books and finding that one, you know, and enjoying it.

Terrie: Thank you so much for joining us, Jennifer, thank you for taking time to share with us and for letting us be a part of your book launch today. What you shared is just really wonderful and makes us think about what we need to do as parents with reading to our children and opening up those wonderful conversations.

Jennifer: Well, thank you. It was really fun to talk to 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 in your life. Remember Jennifer's newest book, A Little Blue Bottle, launches Thursday, 9/17. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to Jennifer's website and other information. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of this podcast. And my blog, my website is terriehellardbrown.com.

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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this episode we look at books for Grandparents and picture books and board books about Grandparents. This Sunday is Grandparents Day, so we're celebrating!

Books recommended in this episode:

Some Other Books in the Grandparenting Matters Series:

Christian Grandparenting Network

Christian Grandparenting Network Facebook Page

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. And today I will add, and with our grandkids, this coming Sunday is Grandparents Day, and so today's episode is dedicated to grandparents and helping them to disciple their grandkids and to leave a legacy of faith for their grandkids.

I have a bunch of books to cover today. I don't know if we're going to get through them all, but we will do our best. One of the first books, and it's actually, there's a set of books written by Josh Mulvihill, and they're all about grandparenting and how we can disciple the next generation and leave a legacy of faith. The first one I want to talk about is called Discipling Your Grandchildren from the Grandparenting Matters Series. And it's Great Ideas to Help Them Know, Love, and Serve God. They use the scripture Deuteronomy 6:1-9. It says, "The most common passage of scripture utilized for family discipleship is Deuteronomy 6:4-9. The Christian community often limits the application of Deuteronomy 6 to parents, but based on the context of Deuteronomy 6:1-2, it has a broader application that includes grandparents.

"Moses Gave the community a charge to love the Lord and diligently teach young people. 'The Commands of God,' Moses States, 'the commands of God are for you and your son and your son's son.' Deuteronomy 6:1-2. The reference to son's son means that Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is not only for parents, but also for grandparents. So from a biblical perspective, grandparents have a critical role with the next generation that is centered around the transmission of faith."

So, I love that because those are the key verses behind me starting this whole podcast. And even though I'm not yet a grandparent, I only have two grand dogs at the moment, I look forward to being a discipling grandparent someday.

The other thing they say here is, and this is quoting, "Deuteronomy 6 helps us remember that discipleship is not one more thing to add to an already busy schedule. Discipleship is not a separate activity we do with a child. It is integrated into all of life. Discipleship can happen while playing catch, cooking dinner, watching a movie, driving in the car, reading the Bible, or working in the garden. According to Deuteronomy 6:7, the following portions of each day present great opportunities to disciple children: mealtime--when you sit in your house, travel time--when you walk by the way, bedtime--when you lie down, morning time--when you rise. Discipleship is what we do as we go through our day. The biblical pattern is for the truth of the Bible to be transferred through everyday activities. When we get ready for bed, eat a meal together, ride in the car, fold laundry together, engage in late night talks, or have fun together. Grandparents who think that they compartmentalize life by assigning a certain number of hours per week to spend on grandparenting have a philosophy that is contrary to the spirit of Deuteronomy 6. It is also a recipe to become a distant or disengaged grandparent. Most Christian grandparents I've met want to make any eternal difference in the lives of their children and grandchildren. The Bible tells us how to do that."

And so that's the premise for all of these books that he's written and where we begin. He says, "The biblical method to disciple children--I explore eight biblical methods of discipleship for grandparents." And these work for parents and grandparents. But I thought this was very good. So the eight methods, biblical methods are "asking questions, blessing (a spoken blessing is an opportunity for a grandparent to share his or her deep affection and desired future for a grandchild. A blessing is valuable because it creates a time and way to communicate affection and affirmation scripturally. We see blessings modeled by God as a common practice in the old Testament and a repeated pattern of scripture), intentional meals, prayer, communicating wisdom, reading, and discussing the Bible, telling God's stories, and sharing the gospel."

So these are biblical ways of naturally discipling and sharing our faith with our children and grandchildren. What I love about these books that he's written, the introduction is so full of information and everything he writes is in a very conversational style. It's very easy to understand, laid out very clearly and just makes it very doable. So I really love these books. I haven't read all of the books in the series, but I have looked at this one, Discipling Your Grandchildren. Another one I've looked at of his is just called Grandparenting: Strengthening Your Family and Passing on Your Faith. He mentions how he saw this T-shirt not long after becoming a grandparent for the first time, and it read: "Grandpa's to do list, spoil them, fill them up with sugar, send them home." You know, we might smile about that, but that is kind of the attitude of our culture.

And really, I think God has called us to so much more. That was from the foreword written by Calvin T Harper in the book. And he's the founder and president of Christian Grandparenting Network. So that's Calvin T Harper, but in the introduction written by Josh, he says, "This was what hit me as under the need. A number of years ago, when I began a PhD program in family ministry, my initial discoveries about the lack of resources for Christian grandparenting were shocking. I found zero in depth, biblical studies on grandparenting, one ministry to equip Christian grandparents (The Christian Grandparent Network led by Calvin Harper who wrote the forward), one small group or Sunday school DVD series on grandparenting, and seven books on grandparenting published in the past 15 years, not counting gift books for grandparenting or grandparenting journals. I discovered that there are millions of Christian grandparents with limited training and resources everywhere. I looked, I saw a huge need."

And so that's what caused him to focus on this series of books that he has written to help equip grandparents, to be great Christian grandparents, to pass on their legacy, and also to disciple their grandchildren or to be a partner with the parents in discipling their grandchildren. I love these books. They're actually very motivating and inspirational. So, I highly recommend his books. I think it's wonderful that God put on his heart to write these books. And so some of the others he's written that I've looked at Biblical Grandparenting: Exploring God's Design for Disciple-Making and Passing Faith to Future Generations. And like I said, he has a whole series of these books. So they're Grandparenting Matters is the series of books. And I'll have the links in the show notes for this episode, but there are so many in this series that just are great books.

Some other books, Grandma, I Need Your Prayers: Blessing Your Grandchildren through the Power of Prayer written by Quin Sherrer and Ruthanne Garlock. This book starts out the first chapter, a grandmother's spiritual influence. So they're talking about how we, as grandparents can affect our children and by praying for our children and grandchildren, we can help bring them to the Lord. And I love that my husband came to the Lord, at least partly because of his grandmother, praying for him and sharing Bible stories with him as a child.

This is what Quin wrote in the first chapter of this book, "Perhaps you're wondering whether your prayers can actually make a difference in your grandchild's life. I (Quin) had an encounter one day that reminded me how much of a difference at grandmother's prayers can make.

"'I'll Bet you had a praying grandmother,' I said to the professional basketball player I'd been chatting with while we were waiting in the Atlanta airport for our flight to be called.

"'I Did. But how did you know?' he asked looking surprised.

"'While We've been talking you mentioned her several times and spoke about how much you love and admire her,' I answered.

"'Yes,' He said softly dropping his head. 'When My mom left, my grandmother took me in to live with her through all those years. She prayed for me and encouraged me in every sport I ever tried. She always told me I could become a professional athlete if I set a goal, practiced for hours, and depended on God to strengthen me.'.

"'And It looks like some of those prayers have been answered,' I replied.

"'She Was always praying for me,' He continued with a smile. 'I Could call her from anywhere I was playing a game, and she'd pray on the phone for me right then. She was a wonderful grandmother, old now, but still praying.'.

"What A tribute to a quiet little grandmother who poured her life and prayers into an abandoned grandson, never dreaming he would one day become a well-known athlete, and what an encouragement to praying grandmothers, that their efforts are not in vain."

I love that. We are impacting the next generation. This book is just very sweet. It has lots of stories to encourage us of different ways that grandparents have prayed for and helped their kids. Then it has essential prayer keys.

"Years Ago, while attending a writer's conference. I (Quin) sat across the dinner table from Catherine Marshall, whom I had long admired, knowing her reputation as an author and also as a praying mother. I asked her, "Can you give me some advice on how to pray more effectively for my three children?"

"Be as specific in your prayers as you can, and plant waiting prayers for your children's future," she advised. Then she asked, "When you pray, do you really expect anything to happen?"

"I pondered that question. Do I really expect anything to happen when I pray? I can tell you now that without a doubt, I do. I not only listened to her advice, but I went home to dig through the Bible to read everything I could find on prayer. As I endeavored to pray for my children and see results, now, many years later, I use these same biblical principles in praying for my grandchildren. Though I share here some things I do in my private prayer times, I'm sure you can add to this list."

And then she lists several things: "Be specific, be persistent, be in agreement, be Bible-based, be open to the Holy Spirit, be submitted to God's plan, be thankful, be willing to fast, and trust him always. The rest of the book goes through how to pray, how to bless your children, how to plant seeds in their lives. The chapters in this book are "A grandmother's spiritual influence," which has all the stories and testimonies, "Praying for spiritual growth," "Praying for homes and families," "Praying for friends and schooling," "Praying for protection and health," "Praying for hurting grandchildren," "Praying for families broken by death or divorce," "Praying for adopted grandchildren and step grandchildren," "Praying for prodigal grandchildren," "Praying for choices and turning points," "Taking the role of parent or co-parent," and "Leaving a lasting legacy."

So this book has so much information and so many good things to offer a grandparent in knowing how best to pray for their grandchildren. Okay. So now very quickly, I'm going to go through some other titles of books that I think are worth looking into to get, as you're preparing to really intentionally grandparent your grandchildren. There's one by Glen Schuknecht and Ellen Schuknecht, and It's A Spiritual Heritage: Connecting Kids and Grandkids to God and Family. And so this is about building a heritage.

And then this one is by Steve and Annie Chapman called 52 Prayers for My Grandchild. In the beginning of their book they have a Grandparent's Prayer. And I'm just going to share this with you.

Thank you. I've seen my children's children. Heaven's love his flesh and bone. Oh, how sweet it is to hear them laughing where it's been quiet far too long. Lord, I pray for these treasures. You have given to my years until they meet you in forever. Take their hand and keep them near Lord. I pray when they get older and my name comes to their minds. May it be the one thing they remember, they saw your blessed face in mine.

Isn't that beautiful? So that's in the first part of this book 52 prayers for my grandchild.

Another one by Ruth Towns and Elmer Towns is Great Lessons and Grand Blessings: Discover how Grandparents Can Inspire and Transform Their Grandchildren.

Larry Fowler has one Overcoming Grandparenting Barriers, and this is from the Grandparenting Matters series that Josh wrote. But this is another book in this series written by Larry Fowler, How To Navigate Painful Problems with Grace and Truth.

This book is called Heirlooms: Passing Faith Stories to Your Grandchildren by Tina Houser. And so this one says, "If you're looking for a way to impact the next generation in a big way, this book is ideal for grandparents, parents, and others who have an opportunity to speak into the lives of children and youth."

The heirlooms book is about sharing our stories and how through our stories, our children and grandchildren can get to know us and our faith. And so this is kind of a unique take on how to share our lives with our children and grandchildren.

Now, I want to cover some of the children's books that are out there. A book that just recently was released is Grandma's Snuggles written by Glenys Nellist and illustrated by Gail Yerrill. And this one's really cute and it goes through the animal kingdom and each animal is talking about their grandma. And so it's just a very cute little board book for babies. It's a rhyming book. And it ends of course with my grandma and talks about a person, a human with their grandma, and it ends with a Bible verse. Every good, perfect gift is from God, but this is just a sweet, sweet little board book. And another cool thing is that Glenys will be my guest on this podcast in October. And we're going to be talking about another book she has launching for Christmas. So be sure to watch for that. And that interview will be a lot of fun.

Some other kids' books that are just really cute--there are tons of different kids' books about grandmas and grandpas. There are board books and picture books. So, I'm going to list just some of the ones that I thought were exceptionally cute and share those with you, but you can definitely Google or check on Amazon, and you'll find lots of them. One book is called Here Comes Grandma by Janet Lord and illustrated by Julie Paschkis. And it's just a book where the grandma is determined to get there any way she can, and it shows every kind of transportation imaginable. And then when she arrives, she hugs the grandchild, but it's just cute because it's like a little adventure of how the grandma gets to see her grandchild. Two of my favorite books about grandmas and grandpas is How to Babysit a Grandma or How to Babysit a Grandpa by Jean Reagan and illustrated by Lee Wildish. And these are so cute because the child is explaining how to babysit your grandma or how to babysit your grandpa. And of course, it's actually the child getting to spend time with the grandparents. The little girl is with her grandma and she describes how to feed her and how to entertain her and how she'll react. And it's so cute. And then in the grandpa one, the little boy is at the--with the grandma when the little girl goes to the grandma's house and spends the night with the grandpa, when it's just like an afternoon, while the parents are away--in each one, the child reassures the grandparent, "Don't worry. The parents always come back." And it's just like if a child were afraid that their mom or dad weren't coming back. They're just adorable.

This is an older book from 2008 by Billy Crystal and illustrated by Elizabeth Sayles. It's called, I Already Know I Love You. And it's a board book that Billy Crystal wrote and I just love this one. It's written to a grandchild even before they're born. How I already know, I love you, and I'm looking forward to this and that in seeing this grandchild grow, and he wrote this for his very first granddaughter Ella.

Another one is I Really Want to See You, Grandma by Taro Gomi. Yumi is the little girl in this story. And she wants to go see her grandma, and her grandma wants to see her. And so they wind up going to each other's house at the same time. So ,they miss each other. Then they go home, and they miss each other, and then they try again. And finally they're on bicycles going to see each other. Cause I really want to see you grandma. And she's like, I really want to see you Yumi. And they meet in the middle, under a tree. And they decided from then on, they would always meet under that tree. But it's a very cute book. Just adorable.

There's another couple books that are really cute. One is when Grandpa Gives You a Toolbox and the other one is When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree written by Jamie L B Deenahan and illustrated by Lorraine Rocha. These books have a twofold purpose first to appreciate what grandparents give as gifts, but also to show how to respond to a gift that you were not expecting and was not on your list. And the writers do a really cute job with that. Of course, with the grant poets, a grandson with the grandma, it's a granddaughter. And with the lemon tree, the tree grows. She's able to make lemonade and sell the lemonade and then is able to go buy exactly what she wanted. And with the toolbox, he's able to make the item that he really wants, and his grandpa helps him, but both are really cute stories and lots of humor in there.

And this one is a little strange, but it's a fun book called Hey Grandude by Paul McCartney and illustrated by Kathryn Durst. And it's a little adventure magic book. The grandpa shows the kids some postcards, and then he has a magic compass that takes somewhere they want to go, and they wind up then coming back at the end of the day and going to sleep. It's just very different from most of the other picture books that are out there about grandparents. He doesn't call his grandkids grandkids, he calls them chillers. So they call him grandude and he calls them chillers. And it's just cute. There are dozens of very sweet board books. That would be really fun to just package up a whole little collection of board books for grandparents to read to their grandkids.

There's Thank You, God, for Grandpa by Amy Parker. And she also has, Thank You, God, for Grandma. There's I Love You, Grandma by Jillian Harker and Kristina Stephenson, and there's quite a few others that are similar. This one is unique. My Nana and Me by Irene Smalls and illustrated by Kathy and Johnson. And I love this book. It's a grandmother African American grandmother and granddaughter and the adventure they have as they go through the day, the grandma then gets into the little girl's bed to fall asleep. And the little girl decides, okay, I'll fall asleep too. So it's kind of a going through the day, but then leading to going to sleep. So it'd be a great bedtime story book.

And then there's Grandpa's Promise and Grandma's Promise by Susan Jones and Lee Holland, and these two books are really cute. It's different animals talking to different grand animals. And they're like, I promise you this. And it talks about all the things they're going to do together and what they're going to teach them and how they're going to feel safe. And it's just really heartwarming. So those books are just sweet as can be. And then there's this one, a really cute book called The Grandpa Book by Todd Parr. This is one of those that your kids can learn to read fairly early because there's very few words in it, but it talks about what a grandpa does and all about a grandpa. And so it's really cute that he, you know, he has lots of pictures of you in his wallet and he likes to tell fish stories and stuff like that. And then of course, there's The Grandma Book that tells all about grandmas. In these it looks like the pictures have been drawn by a child. And so it's very cute. And it's one of those to encourage early literacy and emotional development. It's a good book, especially if you're wanting your child to read on their own. This would be a good one for them to start with that.

There's so many picture books and board books geared towards grandmas and grandpas. I hope you can pick up one and enjoy it together and celebrate Grandparent's Day. This Sunday honor your grandma and grandpa, and enjoy being a grandma and grandpa.

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. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of this podcast. And my blog, my website is terriehellardbrown.com. And when you sign up for my mailing list, remember you also are eligible to download several different freebies that I offer for those who join.

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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this BONUS episode we explore study Bibles for older children and adults with Pastor Dave Brown.

Books Discussed in This Episode:

Transcript:

Terrie: Welcome to Books to Spark, a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids. I'd like to introduce you to our guest today. His name is Pastor Dave Brown. He is my husband, and he has been a pastor in the ministry for over 35 years, 15 of those years, he was a missionary pastor in Taipei, Taiwan. He has a website called Finding God and speaks regularly about prayer, our search for God, and seeking after God's heart with all of our hearts. We're going to be talking about study Bibles today. As your children get older, you may want to get them a really good study Bible. We have several that we like, and we have four kids and got them all different study Bibles. And so, we have a lot to share with you today about Bible resources and study Bibles. Let's just dive right in. What is your favorite study Bible?

Dave: Actually, my favorite study Bible is the Life Application Study Bible. And I like it because I can access it on my phone or my iPad through Tecarta Bible. I'm able to access that and I have access to just about everything they've got, which I love. And the reason I like it is because you have your scripture text in the translation. New Living Translation is what the standard Life Application comes in. And the other thing I like about it is the resources are always there right around the place that you're reading. So when you're reading about a particular place, you know, maybe the first missionary journey of Paul you'll have a map that actually shows that missionary journey right there, where you're reading, instead of having to dig to the back of the, of the book to find the map, you actually have it right where you need it. And so, I love that and they, they even have that same function in the online version or the cell phone version. Should you decide to go that route? So that's my favorite.

Terrie: Yeah. I liked that one too, because they also have a timeline, and I'm always needing a timeline to keep track of the order of the history of things. And, you know, the Jewish Bible was not really linear. And so, it helps me to see a timeline and keep all the stories in the right chronological order in my mind. And then the other thing I like about the Life Application Study Bible is it has character studies of the different characters in the Bible and talks about their strong qualities and their weaknesses, and the synopsis of each book is also really good in the Life Application Bible. And, of course, the whole point of the Life Application Study Bible is life application, to challenge our kids and ourselves as we're being discipled and discipling to apply the word of God to our lives day by day. That's what we're after anyway. So, I think, practically speaking, the New Living Translation is easy to understand. It's easy to teach, it's easy to learn. And then you have the life application part of that, as well as a lot of background information, the maps, the timeline, the character studies, and also they often put in parallel scriptures and Old Testament compared to New Testament on the same subject and stuff like that. It's really a beneficial study Bible. I really like it too. My other favorite one is the Master Study Bible, and I have used it so much that mine has fallen apart. The cover is no longer with us, but the Master Study Bible is typically the New American Standard Bible. And so, I do like that. Like I said before, I like to do my word studies in the New American Standard, but it has a Bible Encyclopedia as part of the study Bible. And so that's really awesome when you first start studying the Bible to have a concordance and an encyclopedia right there with your Bible where you can go and look up words and try to understand what you're reading and what the story is all about is just excellent. And I first got this when I very first started discipling other people. My mom bought this for me, and I have just used it and worn it out like crazy, but it's an excellent one for your high school and older kids. I think the Master Study Bible is phenomenal.

Dave: I'd like to also mention my other favorite, which, and Terrie mentioned the Master Study Bible. This is a pretty old study Bible. This is one of the study Bibles that was popular maybe in the 1970s and 1980s. And another one that was really popular back then was the Thompson Chain Reference Bible. And I had one of those. I still do have it. It's in my office. And I absolutely love it. What I loved about that is it, it has just umpteen number of resources. You know, some of its archaeological resources, they have character studies and word studies and all of these different things. When you pick up the Thompson Chain Reference Bible, half of the Bible is all these other resources, which to me is just phenomenal. Absolutely love Thompson Chain Reference. These are the older versions of study Bible--some of the earlier versions that came out

Terrie: For our daughter who is often on mission trips overseas, we felt that she needed a Bible where she could get a quick reference if she needed to counsel with someone or help them with a situation. And so, we got her The Help Finder Bible: God's Word at Your Point of Need. And this Bible has many tools in the front of the Bible for if you're counseling with someone or ministering to someone, and they have a question and you want to find a quick reference for that. For instance, it says, "disagreements, discernment, discipline, dignity," and then it has verses that go with each of those subjects. "What is the purpose of discipline? How does God discipline his children?" And it has verses that answer these questions. And so, especially with someone who's young in high school, college, getting ready to do mission trips and they are not totally at ease and comfortable with trying to find a verse on the spur of the moment, this Bible is a really handy reference for trying to find the different verses that go with different situations, different questions that people might have. "How can I be sure of my salvation? Is salvation available to everyone? How can I be saved?" And "how can I deal with stress and pressure? Should I be surprised by the stress of life?" So, these are all questions that are in the front of this Bible, and then it has the Old and the New Testament. And each beginning of the book has information about that book and what you'll be reading about. So, it gives you an outline for each of the books of the Bible. This one just happens to be paperback. So it was lightweight for carrying in her suitcase as she went to Asia. So, it's a great little reference study Bible, more of a reference Bible.

I have another one that I really like, and this one is called The Evidence Bible. It's compiled by Ray Comfort. Kirk Cameron wrote the forward in it, but it has such great information in between the passages for talking about how to use apologetics. When you're talking to people to answer their questions about how we know that the Bible is real, it's irrefutable evidence for the thinking mind. And I think it's really well done. And one that's similar to that, that we bought for two of our kids and for our daughter's boyfriend is the Apologetics Bible. And so that one also has throughout the text. It has little notes for how to talk to people, answer their questions about the Bible, answer their questions about why we believe what we believe and to use apologetics, to answer people's questions. And so, I think especially today, when people haven't been raised necessarily with the Bible and knowing what all it says to be equipped and to be prepared, to know how to answer their questions is always beneficial. Okay. Do you have another one you'd like to talk about?

Dave: Yeah, actually I have several because I have the Tecarta Bible on my iPhone. It's an app. I have multiple translations that I'm able to download, so I don't have to be online. You can get it, you can access most of these for free that translations you can, but the study Bibles, you usually have to buy those. But I have several study Bibles that I really like that I'm able to access and they're on my phone. This is what I love about modern technology, you know, with iPads and Kindles and stuff like that. You can take a whole library of your books with you in one little device. And here I have, I have four different study Bibles in my iPad that I can both access because of Tecarta. And I have the Life Application that I mentioned a minute ago. I also have the Lucado Life Lessons Bible, a study Bible. I have Maxwell Leadership Bible, which if any of you are familiar with John Maxwell and his leadership principles and stuff, this is a study Bible that actually shows you the different leadership elements throughout scripture. And it's incredible. And then of course, those of you who love Charles Stanley, probably the most famous most popular TV preacher on television. He has The NASB Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Study Bible. And I like Charles Stanley because it's very practical. I like the Life Application because the commentary notes, the explanations of the text are very application oriented, which I love that. And Charles Stanley's Study Bible, The Life Principle Study Bible is the very same way it deals with daily life principles and how the Bible answers those. And these are incredible study Bibles. It's like they have a study Bible for everything now. And I just love that, you know, that you can, if you want to find a Bible that a study Bible that helps you to focus on a specific thing like apologetics or like archaeology, or like, you know, leadership or all of these different things, you'll be able to find just about anything you want. It's just determining if you like the author and the notes that they're going to write. And the fact is there so many out there you're bound to find something good and helpful for you.

Terrie: And speaking of archaeology, for our other son who wants to be a history teacher we got him The Archaeology Study Bible, which gives you a whole lot of the historical and archaeological background for the scriptures and the setting in which they were written and took place. And so, we got him that study Bible because that's where his heart is and what he's interested in. I also have the amplified study Bible, and I also have a Jewish study Bible. So, I have a lot of different study Bibles for the different situations. And then another study Bible that I think would be wonderful to give to your children who love art, the study Bibles, where you illustrate them, where you put the journaling and the pictures into the Bible. And so, I have the Christian Standard [Notetaking] Bible and it has on every single page, a place to write notes. And then you have certain pages that are blank for you to draw pictures. And so, our daughter who's an artist would just love this and being able to write all over her Bible and draw pictures, and I do the same thing. So, this is fun to have, and it's like making the Bible your own and really taking ownership for it. So, when you're looking for study Bibles, you want to also check some of them have the version. That's just the regular version. And then they have one that's a special version for students. And these are usually geared toward middle school and older. So, you want to make sure that they're appropriate for the age of your child. If you are wanting to get a study Bible for your child, who's still in elementary school or better yet. If you're wanting to get a Bible that you can use as a family to study together for your family devotions, there's a couple out there. A Family Worship Bible Guide includes the text of the Bible. It includes daily prayer, time, daily singing and praise and daily devotionals in scripture, reading together as a family, you can also use a simple One Year Bible Reading Plan to go through the Bible with your family. Another one that is just a guide for doing family devotionals, but this one has a guide for using the Bible for your family devotions and how you can keep your children engaged in the conversation and can open up conversations with your kids for Bible study. Now for the younger children, there's of course The Discoverer's Bible. There's several different Bibles geared toward children of different ages. And last time, like we mentioned, there's the very young Bedtime Devotions with Jesus Bible. And then we have, you can go a step above there with the adventure Bible and there's different ones that will step up until you get to these study Bibles for your middle school, high school and college age children.

Dave: There's one here, the NIRV, the Study Bible for Kids. And this one is put out by Zondervan it's for younger kids, and it has pictures and stuff like that, but it has helpful tools and things like that to help kids who are, are learning to read the Bible. It's written at a third-grade reading level. And so it's perfect for learning those learning to read. It's got colorful artwork, easy to read Bible text and fun features.

Terrie: We used to use this in one of the schools where I taught it is like a paraphrase of the NIV. So, it is more of a paraphrase, but it is excellent for that very young reader who is just learning to tackle the Bible. So that is something to consider. And so, it's really well written. And of course, the NIV is a great translation. So it isn't, you know, bad. It's just be aware of what you're getting when you get that for your child. And so, it is one that's great for the third grade level. If they're at sixth grade level, the NLT new living translation, and if they're at 11th grade level, then you can go into any of them. But the NASB is the 11th grade level.

Dave: There's a New Believers Bible. So if your kids become Christians and they have just invited Christ into their life where maybe, you know, someone in your church who has just become a new Christian, who's a young believer, the New Believers Bible would be a good one for them. It'll have some helpful tools and helping them kind of get through the beginning phases and the challenges that a new believer deals with, you know, cause this study Bible will be able to help you with some of those things. There are so many different possible choices: Life Journey Bible, you know, the Life Connect Bible. There are some really cool study Bibles here. The NIV Student Bible is a good one for students so that if you're especially dealing with your children or you're dealing with you know, middle schoolers or high school students, there are so many choices. You just have to kind of go check them out and see what best appeals to where you think they are and what they need to hear.

Terrie: Yeah. And that's what we did with our kids. We looked at what our children were interested in and what would best meet their needs as they were studying the Bible. And that's how we came to decide what we were going to get them.

Dave: They even have some that are gender related to a particular gender of a teenager. Like here's the Revolution Bible for Teen Guys, which I think is nice. So, it deals with, you know, girls and boys and especially in their teenage years have different focus and different needs. And so this would be a good one for them.

Terrie: Yeah. That one, the devotionals that are in the margins of the book are geared toward guys, and they have one that's geared more towards girls.

Dave: Yeah. It's the True Images, The Bible for Teen Girls.

Terrie: Yeah. And so those are cool. I think we got one for our younger daughter at one point. There's a lot of material out there. If you have any questions about them, feel free to shoot me an email or put a question in the comments, and I'll try my best to answer your question. We've done a lot of research on a lot of different Bibles because we wanted to get good study Bibles for our own kids over the years. And so, we've researched a lot, and I've had so many different ones that I've liked over the years that I've used for study and for preparing. 'Cause I write Bible studies and write devotionals and as well as my children's books, so I have a lot of good study Bibles at my fingertips all the time. I hope this has been helpful to you. And as Dave was mentioning for you as the parent, there are some excellent online Bible study materials that are free, that you can access. Of course, you can always go to BibleGateway or Bible.com which is also a crosswalk. Yeah, but there's also the, a sword ESword has commentaries. It has the Naves Topical Index. They have Bible dictionaries, word studies. So those are available online for free. And then you use Tecarta. You said? Where can they find that? Is that a free one?

Dave: It's a free app on your phone. And some of the translations are free. If you have data on your phone, then you can access all the translations for free, as long as you're streaming, as long as you're able to, to use the internet, but you can download them onto your phone so that if you don't have access to the internet and some of those you need to buy, but you have access to all of these different Bible study Bibles on the Tecarta. So you can have multiple study Bibles in your phone and have access to all of those and be able to access them very easily.

Terrie: We want you, of course, as we're going through the Books that Spark podcast, to first, the most important book that we can introduce our children to is the Bible and to get them excited about knowing and reading and memorizing the Bible. And as we teach our kids, we get more excited about the Bible as well, and can dig in deep. And I love digging in deep to the word of God and just really learning more and more and more about the heart of God as we study the Bible together.

Dave: I would like to do a pitch for a book that is geared towards Bible study. If you can get your children to love to study the Bible, we have all of these study Bibles, which are wonderful, but there is a tool that I have used for years. It was the first one like it that ever came out written by Rick Warren called the Bible Study Methods. And in that, in that book, he talks about the different ways of studying the Bible. There's the devotional method and thematic studies and word studies and, and chapter studies, character studies and biographical studies, all these different study methods. And one of the things he says just to whet your appetite is he says the answer to studying the Bible is learning to ask the right questions. And he tells you what questions you need to ask for each of these Bible study methods. And he also shows you the resources that you will most likely need for each of those Bible study methods. So, it's a wonderful book still in print. After 25, 30 years, it's been a tremendous resource. And so, I highly recommend that to you. Bible Studies by Rick Warren.

Terrie: I hope that this will challenge you to dig deep into the Bible and share it with your kids. 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. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of this podcast. And my blog, my website is TerrieHellardBrown.com. When you join my mailing list, you automatically have several freebies that you can download and enjoy with your kids.

Our Guest:

Pastor Dave Brown Dave is the English pastor at Life Change Baptist Church in San Leandro, California. The church has Indonesian, Mandarin, and English congregations. He is my husband, and he has been a pastor in the ministry for over 35 years, 15 of those years, he was a missionary pastor in Taipei, Taiwan. He has a website called Finding God and speaks regularly about prayer, our search for God and seeking after God's heart with all of our hearts.

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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this episode we explore different Bible translations and which ones are best for children at different ages.

Pastor Dave Brown is our guest on this episode.

Books discussed in this episode:

Our favorite Bible for children over all is the ERV (Easy-to-Read Version) of the Bible. Second choice for children is NLT (New Living Translation) and, third is ICB (International Children's Version).

Transcript: Terrie: Welcome to books, the spark, a podcast for parents and caregivers, celebrating books, that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion, leading to teachable moments with our kids. I'd like to introduce you to our guest today. His name is pastor Dave Brown. He is my husband, and he has been a pastor in the ministry for over 35 years, 15 of those years, he was a missionary pastor in Taipei, Taiwan. He has a website called finding God and speaks regularly about prayer, our search for God and seeking after God's heart. With all of our hearts. I asked him to join me today because we're going to be talking about what is the best Bible to use with your kids. And we're going to be discussing the different types of Bibles and what's best for each age group. Welcome Dave. First. I have three points that I want to share personally.

When choosing a Bible, when I became a Christian, I was seven years old and my mom's best friend gave me a Bible. Of course, it was King James version because that's really all we had back then. I would try to read it as I got a little older, I would try to read it, and I didn't understand any of it. And so, I prayed and asked God to help me understand what I was reading, and the very next day when I got up and read my Bible, all of the sudden I understood it. So the first thing I want to mention is we don't want to discount prayer when we're using the Bible with our kids, the Holy Spirit can help them understand what they're reading and can make the Bible come alive to them and open up God's word to them. So that part is, is imperative that we pray first and let the Holy Spirit work. But I think then we can choose wisely and make the best choices for our kids. The second point I want to make is the Bible definitely has some PG and even R-rated sections. How would you suggest handling that with your kids?

Dave: Well, that's a good question. I keep thinking about how VeggieTales did it, if you notice they dealt with some of those subjects and they kind of told the story without necessarily sharing the PG or R-rated content while still managing to get the point across. And so, I thought that was very well done. And I think having the right translation can help there are children's translations that do that.

Terrie: Yes, there are in some don't talk about, they just talk about how well, especially with Bible story books, Bible story books, sometimes talk about how Adam and Eve had a baby and they don't talk about how Adam and Eve got the baby. And then there's others that talk about them having relations or whatever. So, so you can pick and choose and choose wisely for the age of your child. The third thing is: Please get a translation and not a paraphrase. A paraphrase is almost like having a commentary or a storybook. It's not the real Bible. It's not the full translation and they're fun to read. Sometimes I enjoy reading the message sometimes, but I wouldn't use it as a gift for a child or an adult. And I wouldn't certainly use it for Bible study. When you have a paraphrase, it's limited in its scope. It's related to what the person interpreted it as. Do you have any comments on that?

Dave: It is it is exactly that probably the most famous paraphrase would be the living Bible. And the living Bible was written by a man who wanted to give a Bible to his daughter that he thought she could understand. And so basically, he went verse by verse and then interpreted it. A paraphrase is good for reading, but it's not. If you're wanting to study the Bible, it's not the best way to go.

Terrie: So, I want to go over some of the main and most respected translations that are available. And we're just dealing with the English Bible today. If you speak a different language and have questions about that, please post a comment and we'll be happy to try to answer that question for you. We know about Spanish and Chinese Bibles. We don't know about all the others, but we have experience with Spanish and Chinese, but we're just going to talk about the English translations today. And of course, the most famous English translation is probably the King James version. What do you think of the King James version?

Dave: The King James version, two issues I have with the King James one is that it was written in English. That's 400 years old or older, and they spoke different back then. It was wonderful for that time. But it's not how we understand English today. And for the average person, especially a young child, who's trying to understand God's word. It's not the best choice because the language poses a challenge and a struggle. The second thing is that we now, because of the dead sea scrolls have more current information on the Bible, there were more scrolls that, that completed things that made the Bible more, I guess, complete is the best way I can say it. And because of that, the King James version is okay, but it's a, it's probably not the best.

Terrie: And there's also the New King James version and the KJ21. And there's also the Third Millennium Bible, which is a version of the King James and all four of those still use the older English, even though they've updated it and tried to make it more contemporary. The one thing I hear is a positive for King James is if you're wanting to study and memorize scripture, it's very poetic and it's easier to memorize sometimes. So that's something to keep in mind. Okay. And it is a word for word translation from the manuscripts they had at the time does not include the dead sea scrolls. Okay. One that I really like, and I think probably the two top translations for word for word would be the new American standard and the revised standard. My favorite is the New American Standard. If I'm doing a word study or trying to do an inductive study, I'm going to pull my NASB out every time. And I may read it alongside my other translations, but that's one of the main translations I'll look at when I'm doing an inductive Bible study. What do you have to say about the NASB and the NRSV?

Dave: Well, the NASB, it's not the easiest reading, but when you're doing word studies and you want to delve into a more accurate word studies than the New American Standard is definitely the way to go. It benefits from having the, the, the scrolls that came from the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, we have a more accurate, more current translation when it comes to that. But the sentence structure and the New American Standard Bible is, especially for children, a little hard to read because it doesn't read like a typical person would speak or understand. And it also uses some of the older language that the King James used. It's definitely the most dependable go-to Bible. If you're going to do word for word study, it's definitely the best revised standard is a little older, you know, it's, it's also a word for word, accurate Bible, and it's a, it's a little bit of a different field, same thing. It has a lot of the old language. And so, it's a little bit harder to understand, but it has its merits. It has its benefits. You know, it's not the kind of Bible I will read every day, but when I'm digging down into deep Bible study, I will certainly probably more likely go for the New American Standard version.

Terrie: Now the New American Standard Bible is written at about an 11th grade level. So if that helps you also understand if you have a child who is preparing for ministry, you know, they're called into ministry and they're in high school, this might be what you would want to get them as a study Bible in the NASB for them to start preparing word studies and inductive Bible studies. And to really dig deeper into the word, another word for word translation is the English Standard Version. And it's become quite popular as well. But I think overall I prefer the NLT New Living Translation, which is about a sixth-grade level of reading. So, it's still not going to be first grade, second grade level of reading, but a sixth-grade level is certainly easier to tackle then 11th grade. And it's a thought for thought translation. So, you have your word for word translation, your thought for thought translation, and then your paraphrase. And so, the most reliable as far as going from the original languages of Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic would be your word for word. And then thought for thought is what would you like to tell us a little about what it means by thought for thought?

Dave: Sure. Well, first of all, let me just say that any of our English translations are not really the original God inspired translation. Those you have to go to the Hebrew and the Greek, the original Hebrew and Greek that were inspired, but these are translations from those texts. The word for word we talked about is literal word for word the thought for thought Bibles, basically take the sentence and actually put it in an accurate translation. But speaking more about the thought in a way that we can understand in today's English that is helpful. And once again, the paraphrase is just a, a person's personal interpretation rather than going to the text and actually drawing out a, what we would call exit Jesus. The actual translation from the language, a paraphrase is coming from the interpretation of what the reader is or the writer of that paraphrase things that it means. And because of that, it's not as dependable, but a thought for thought Bible is definitely a dependable translation. It is actually derived from the original text but done so more with a thought for thought understanding rather than a literal word for word and description.

Terrie: And the probably the most popular thought for thought translation would be the NIV. And we both agree. We like the 1984 version, much better than the 2011 version of NIV. That's the New International Version. And it's probably the most widely used in churches today. If they don't use the KJV King James version, they usually use NIV. Another one, of course, I mentioned a minute ago, the sixth grade level one is NLT, New Living Translation, which was to take the place of The Living Bible paraphrase. They wanted to make an actual translation. And so the same people who did the living Bible did the new living translation to make it an actual translation. But what I like about it because I've taught ESL [English as a Second Language] for so long, that's why I fell in love with the NLT because my ESL students could understand it. And so that when I found out it was a sixth-grade level, that fit pretty well with children. I enjoy using the NLT as well. The HCSB, the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation. It has now become the CSB. They've updated it and they call it the CSB and the New Century Version, which is when you, like, why do you like the new century version?

Dave: It's simple. It uses, uses less words. So, you know, if you think of, you know, of different age levels, I know because I grew up overseas, Chinese characters, they have 2,800 characters in all, but modern day. They only use about six to 800 of those characters in everyday language. Well, think about the kinds of words that might be used in a stronger translation that is meant for older readers and bring it back to a childhood level where children use a smaller vocabulary. It uses a smaller vocabulary that keeps it in a very simple, easy to understand format, and it is a translation.

Terrie: From that translation, actually it came about from a children's translation, the International Children's Bible, which is a popular children's translation of the Bible. And the New Century Version came from that. I mean, they updated it to the New Century. The ICB is available in children's Bibles. We're looking at The Bedtime Devotions with Jesus Bible. It's a kid friendly early reader edition of the Holy Bible with selections from the ICB, The International Children's Bible. This does not have the entire Bible. It takes out the PG and the R-rated parts of the Bible. It's just the parts that are kid appropriate. It has some prayers and devotionals in it as well. So, it is the Bible, but it's not the whole Bible. So, it's just like, it would be a great first Bible for young children. Okay. So, my two favorite versions of the Bible, I love to read the New Living Translation on a daily basis and the Amplified Bible. Now the Amplified Bible takes each word and expounds on it. And I've read some comments on the amplified in some say it involves paraphrase a little bit because it's the interpretation of those words beyond just a literal simple translation. But what I love about it is it kind of expands the language because English is limited sometimes, and the Greek is much more specific. And so it expands that word more to give us the nuances that the word might hold. And sometimes in the simpler translations, language-wise you lose some of those nuances. So, I love to do side-by-side studies with the new living translation and the amplified. And then again, if I'm doing inductive, I'll include the NASB. How about you?

Dave: I also am a fan of the new living translation. Most of the time, I'm in a little bit different every year. I choose a translation that I'm going to read from, and I try to mix it up a little bit just so that it doesn't become so repetitious to the point that you're reading and saying, Oh yeah, I remember that. And you just kind of ignore the rest. I want to hear it from different perspectives, but I definitely lean on the new living translation when I'm working in my sermons. I use the new living translation as my base translation when I'm dealing with my sermons and stuff, but I also use other translations frequently and I will read different translations to, to kind of help me to see a different perspective or, or just to just hearing it a little bit differently. Maybe allows that verse to jump out at me a little bit differently. It doesn't change the meaning at all. It just like Terry was mentioning earlier, the nuances can kind of with the amplified, it kind of gives you, Oh, that's what that could mean. And so, I kind of liked that the amplified, I love it because it definitely helps you to look at that verse. You can just take the amplified Bible and read it and you can stop at a verse and just think about the different ways that it's saying a particular word and think, well, how does that apply? And it just opens things up a little bit more. So, I definitely like that.

Terrie: Okay. Now, as we were preparing for this podcast, we read through several different versions of the Bible that we hadn't necessarily been reading a lot of. And we actually found one that we really like for children, and it's not necessarily written for children. It just is such a simplified translation that we both agreed. We liked it a whole lot. We looked at the International Children's Bible and it's good, but we actually preferred (you want to do a drum roll?) We actually liked the Easy-to-Read Version. The ERV and this Bible was originally the English version for the deaf. I don't know if you know about the deaf language, the American sign language, but it is not a literal translation from English. It is a different language. And so when they read the Bible, sometimes deaf people would have trouble understanding what was being said, because we speak differently in English than we do in American Sign Language. The syntax is different and, and we say things differently. And so they wrote this easy to read version, which was taken from the English version for the deaf. And I think they've done a really great job for a child to understand scripture. Would you agree with that?

Dave: Yeah. in fact, one thing I liked about it, especially when you're dealing with children and their ability to focus some of the versions as we were reading them side by side tended to be really wordy and had, you know, it's like it, they took a simple verse that we know, and it made it longer. It seemed and simplified but longer. And the ERV what we appreciated about it was that it kept the words few and made the meaning very clear. And so that's probably why we liked it so much.

Terrie: So our second choice when we were just looking at versions together that we thought if we were going to buy a Bible today for a child, that's probably in grade school, we both agreed the ERV would be our first choice and our second choice would be NLT. And then third would have been new century. Right? Correct. Yeah. So that's kind of an ICB and new century are basically the same thing. So one or the other, but we both, as we went through all these different translations, we both felt the same way. So that would be our recommendation. If you have a child who's in early elementary, I would say the ERV would be an excellent translation to get for them. If you have a child who is in higher elementary than I would say the NLT, and if you have a child who is just infant to toddler age, either get a Bible storybook or get the bedtime devotions with Jesus Bible that I mentioned, that's the ICB version and is only part of the Bible for your child to start reading.

If you have any questions, you can certainly put those in the comments as well. We love your questions. We love your comments. And if you have a favorite Bible, put it in the comments and tell us why it's your favorite. And I'm very glad you joined us today. Thank you, Dave, for being here and sharing your words of wisdom. Thank you for inviting me. And I hope that our discussion sparked some ideas for you that will lead to some great discussions with the word of God, with your children. And if you'd like to get notifications of our podcasts, to be sure to subscribe, I hope you were blessed today and that you have a great week. Thank you for joining us for books that spark a podcast, celebrating books that sparked imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of this podcast. And my blog, my website is terriehellardbrown.com. When you join my mailing list, you automatically have several freebies that you can download and enjoy with your kids.

Our Guest: Pastor Dave Brown Dave is the English pastor at Life Change Baptist Church in San Leandro, California. The church has Indonesian, Mandarin, and English congregations. He is my husband, and he has been a pastor in the ministry for over 35 years, 15 of those years, he was a missionary pastor in Taipei, Taiwan. He has a website called Finding God and speaks regularly about prayer, our search for God and seeking after God's heart with all of our hearts.

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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this episode my husband Pastor Dave Brown and I discuss choosing Bible Story Books.

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. I'd like to introduce you to our guest today. His name is pastor Dave Brown. He is my husband, and he has been a pastor in the ministry for over 35 years, 15 of those years, he was a missionary pastor in Taipei, Taiwan. He has a website called Finding God and speaks regularly about prayer, our search for God, and seeking after God's heart with all of our hearts. And we're going to talk to you today about Bible story books for your kids. Dave, thank you for joining us today.

Dave: Thank you.

Terrie: When we're looking for Bible storybooks for our kids, there are about five things that I consider.

1. We want to check the publisher or the source. Some of the publishers I highly recommend for Bible storybooks are B and H Kids, which is a part of Lifeway, David C. Cook, Zondervan or Zonderkidz, and Beaming Books. Those are four good resources.
2. Check that the stories are true to the Bible that they stick with, what the Bible says, and don't take too many liberties or a poetic license, and you can do that by looking at the pictures as well. And that brings me to number three—
3. Make sure the pictures are pretty and are interesting and are going to keep a child's attention because the little kids are going to look at that book over and over again because of the pictures.
4. Think of the developmental age of your child. That's always the case with any book we buy, but we also need to consider that with our Bible storybooks. And you need to think about whether you want them to read it by themselves or with you. And so you think of those kinds of things. And that goes to number five—
5. Consider the size and shape of the book. If you're going to be reading it together as a family or reading it before bedtime together, then you want possibly to have a bigger book that you can share. Some of the Bible books are bigger in size than others are like a paperback novel and are small. And so they're just for someone who's reading on their, then the last one is--
6. The educational element. Do you want one that has questions for discussion at the end of the story? Do you want extra facts added in sidebars or bubbles or whatever to make it more fun? Do you want it to be very straightforward? A very simple five minute devotional type of one to two pages, long story. So, look at the educational elements, look at the way it's formatted to see if it fits your needs exactly.

First, I want to ask you why is it important for us to read Bible stories?

Dave: Well, Bible story is, especially when you're really young help capture your imagination. And I remember as a child, you know, my grandmother used to read Bible stories to me and it stuck with me and my parents always had a Bible story book in my bookshelf. So on rainy days, that was a book that I commonly pulled out and led to read stories about David and Goliath and Daniel and the lion's den and many others that let, I just loved reading about and that spoke about God. So, they're really good for little kids who can't sit down and actually read through a Bible and get something every time. Definitely a good way to start.

Terrie: I know you were not raised in technically a Christian home. So how did having that Bible story book affect your coming to Christ?

Dave: Even though I grew up in a home where we didn't go to church and we weren't Christians, my parents would have told me that we were Christians and we went to church once a year. We were one of those kinds of people. So there was always this essence that we believed in God, but we didn't know anything about him. And you know, reading the Bible stories helped me to actually know something about the Bible in a way that I was able to sit down and actually have a motivation to read something. You know, we as kill it as kids, we love reading stories of heroes and people who defied the odds and different things like that. Like David and Daniel and others, Samson, and, you know, those kinds of stories captured my attention and I loved reading them. And they were written in such a way that, you know, that it was, it was in a story format. So I absolutely enjoyed that. And I spent most of my life reading those and I believe God used those moments for the time when I finally did come to Christ to kind of give a foundation and push me in the right direction, because I had that basis of knowing these stories and these you know, these events that actually happened in history.

Terrie: Yeah, the same for me, my grandfather, well, I was raised in a Christian home. My dad was a deacon, and we went to church every Sunday from the time I was born. But my grandfather had a whole set of records that told Bible stories and it had sound in the background. It's like listening to a radio show that had the Bible story acted out. And I just fell in love with the word of God because of those stories. And so, Bible stories can have a profound effect on a child's development and on preparing them for a future relationship with God and a love for the word of God. I believe it's a very important thing. We also show them by reading from these stories that they matter to us and we can start teaching them to that. These are historical stories. These, like you said, these are things that really happened in history.

So, I've done some research on several different Bible storybooks. And what I've found is no matter what, when you get, you're going to have something to criticize and that's because these are not the word of God written out by inspired by God writings. These are people retelling stories. And every time I read one, some of them, I think they're just, they've told the story so beautifully. And so well, and then another time I'll read in the same book, man, I would have said that so differently. I could have done that better or whatever. And I've read many comments from parents who've said the same thing or how they would say it differently, or they didn't think it was well done or they left out something they felt was important. I did try to avoid the ones that changed the story. And I don't understand that I don't like the Bible story books that take liberties, you know, maybe they consider it poetic license.

But I think when you're dealing with the word of God, you don't want to take poetic license to the point that you're changing what the story actually says. For instance, one Bible story book had at creation that on the, that when God said, let there be light, he created the sun, and we know he didn't create the sun until later the that was just light separated from dark. That was not the creation of the sun. And so, either someone didn't reread their Bible to know what they were writing before they wrote the story, or they just made up their own thing. And I think that's a problem. So, I found Bible story books that I liked the best for different reasons.

The first one is 101 Favorite Stories from the Bible by Ura Miller. And the pictures are very realistic. And I love that because I think if we're going to help children understand that these stories are real, that they need to have pictures that look real and are not all cartoony. And the other thing I like about this, each story is on one page. And then it has the actual scripture that goes with it. So, if you want to look at the scripture, you can, and then it has a thought for the parents, either a Bible verse or a question or a thought. And then it has a few simple questions for the kids to kind of evoke some conversation between the parent and the child. So, that was one of my favorites.

And then the other one that I liked was it's like a comic book. It's a paperback. It has, but it only has black and white drawings, but they are realistic drawings. I shouldn't say comic book because they're not comic pictures. They're more realistic pictures again. And this is the 365 Read Aloud Bedtime Bible Stories. It's by Barber Publishers. It has, again, the stories are one to two pages long, usually one page long. And there's one for each day of the year. So, you can use it almost like a devotional book. And it also has the scripture reference. And it also has a question at the end of each story. And so that's another one that's and it's more paperback. So, it looks, it has the look that would be more appealing to a little bit older elementary kid. Wouldn't you say? Yeah. And then I think this first one would appeal more to the younger kids. And my favorite is the Jesus Storybook Bible. Every story whispers his name written by Sally Lloyd Jones and illustrated by Jago, but this one is much more colorful. The drawing is not really cartoon. It's more stylistic. What would you say?

Dave: Kind of makes me think of a children's story based out of, out of Europe. I'm trying to think of the girl Madeline. Oh yeah. Madeline. It kind of reminds me of Madeline. Caricatures and so it's kind of unique in that way.

Terrie: That's really pretty. And I'm drawn to this kind of artwork, I think is why I like these two [book and coloring book]. And so, the stories are fairly short. Because there's so many pictures, they do cover more than just one page. They actually cover several pages and, you know, they've taken a few liberties, for instance, this one picture shows is an Eve, Adam—Eve holding the snake. And I don't think that that ever happened, but the drawings are well done. The stories are told really well, and it's really beautiful. I think a child, any child would just enjoy looking at the pictures, even if they couldn't read it for themselves. When the parent isn't reading it, I think they would look at all the pictures and it does cover a lot more of the stories. Well, with the 365, you're covering most of the stories, but it does cover the Old and the New Testament. And they do have some Bible verses in here that have been paraphrased by the author and they do acknowledge that, that they are paraphrased and then others are just quoted. And then there's also some quotes from some other great Christian leaders and writers. This is published by Zondervan and or Zonderkidz. And there's been over a million copies sold of this Jesus Storybook Bible.

Another one that I think is beautifully done. I would think it would work for a little bit older elementary up through middle school. Even I think a high schooler would enjoy this book. It's called The Promises of God's Storybook Bible: The Story of God's Unstoppable Love by Jennifer Lyell. The artwork is beautiful. The way it is written is very well done. This is of all the story books I've read. It's the most straightforward, right? From the scripture of just telling the story as it's written in the scriptures. And so, I do like this book a lot.

Now for the very young child, there are some very cute board books and lift-the-flap Bible story books. That would be good to have for the very young child when they want to read and look at the pictures and on their own a little bit, or with them in your lap.

One is the Lift-the-Flat Bible Stories for Young Children by Andrew J DeYoung and Naomi Joy Krueger, and illustrated by Megan Higgins. And this book is very well-written, and the pictures are very simple, colorful pictures with little questions and information along the way, talks about how God asked Adam to name the animals. There's not a lot of detail in the story. It's just a very simple telling of the stories, but I think it's very well-done, and it is published by Beaming Books. And they're one of the publishers I really like. I think they do a good job.

Another one for you—this is for level one readers. So, this would be a K, one, two level book. It's called I Can Read My Illustrated Bible for Beginning Readers, Level One from Zondervan and illustrated by Peter Francis. And so, it is an illustrated Bible and has few words so that the young reader can read the story.

For instance, for Genesis 1-2, it says, "Long ago, there was no world. There was no sun, there was no moon." Then you go to the next page. "God said, I will make the world. So, God made the earth. God said, I will make the sun and stars. He said, they are good."

Now this one doesn't put in every part of it because in between there would have been the separation of the land from the water. But it still has quite a bit of detail, enough detail that it's well done. And I think a young reader would enjoy being able to read it on their own, but even a very young child younger than that would enjoy having it read to them. So that's one that I would recommend.

And then one last one for the really young reader, Early Readers Bible by V Gilbert Beers. This one is as 64, easy-to-read Bible stories. And this one, I really like. It's by Zonderkidz. Again, it's made where if it's like a first grader, they could read most of this, definitely by second grade, they could read this on their own, but it's got enough of a text that it would be fun to read to a child. And the pictures are simple, but very colorful. So, children would enjoy looking through the book. It's definitely not the full Bible. It's not the full story, but it does a good job for the very young reader.

The one I found that is closest to just repeating what the Bible says in a way that children can understand would be the one that's called The Promises of God's Story Book Bible: The Story of God's Unstoppable Love by Jennifer Lyell, and that one I was most impressed with how they told the stories. As far as the one that is the most poetic and beautiful as far as the illustrations is The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd Jones. It's the one that we gave away in our giveaway in July, along with its companion coloring book. And it's one of my favorites as far as Bible storybooks go.

For graphic novel style books that you would want for older children to read on their own, the two best of those that I found were The Action Bible: God's Redemptive Story Action Bible Series by David C. Cook and illustrated by Sergio Cariello and edited by Doug Mauss and the Epic: The Story That Changed the World by Aaron Armstrong and the B and H kids editorial staff, and Heath MacPherson. These two are done really well as like a graphic novel style of writing and art that would be excellent for an older elementary through high school child, especially one who isn't reading their real Bible, but you're wanting to get them started in understanding what the Bible is all about.

And if you have children who are even older in high school and older, and you just want them to read some books based on Bible stories, just to enjoy digging deeper into some stories, then I highly recommend Francine rivers. She has a series of books that are about men in the Bible and women in the Bible. I've been reading the ones about the women in the Bible. I love hers about Ruth. She has one about Mary, one about Bathsheba and went about Rahab [and Tamar called Lineage of Grace.] And they're just amazing. And then there's the one she has the ones of about several of the men in the Bible who were the like second in command, not the main character, but second in command [called Sons of Encouragement]. And she digs deep into their stories. Of course, it is fictionalized like historical fiction because we don't have all the details that she includes in the story. But she did extensive research on the culture of the time and tried to be true to the biblical culture and to the scriptures in her retelling of these stories. Each of those also has a Bible study companion to go along with it. These are really good. I would recommend trying those out.

If you're wanting to get a good Bible storybook, research it well. If you're giving it as a gift, I recommend reading all of it or most of it before you give it to a child, just to make sure that you do agree with what's being said. The child is looking at this as a storybook, and even though sometimes the stories were not told exactly right, by the time we get old enough to understand and look into the Bible, we find those discrepancies and throw out the falsehoods. I remember as a child when I was in Sunday school, we had a picture of Adam and Eve, and Adam was over there sleeping, taking a nap. And Eve was over at the tree, talking to the serpent and grabbing the fruit. And that picture stuck in my head for years and years and years. And I always questioned why God was upset with Adam poor Adam was asleep and Eve came over and gave him the fruit. He probably didn't even know what fruit it was. This was my thinking when I was a little kid because of that picture. So, the Bible story pictures will affect our kids and they are man-made pictures. They are man-made interpretations of the stories. We do have to be aware of that. But what I did was then when I read the Bible and just read it for what it said, I realized, it says very clearly, and Adam was there with her. He just didn't say anything. So, it's more understandable why God was upset with him. He's just standing there letting her talk to the serpent. And then when she hands him, the fruit he's like, thank you. So, then it makes it more understandable. When we do give our children the Bible, we need to make sure that they are reading what the Bible says and putting some of these misconceptions out of their minds.

Dave: I would like to just mention too, when I was reading the Bible stories as a kid, the thing that did catch my attention were the pictures. And, and it's what kind of drew me to it. I mean, think about it when you were a child, you know, you could have written a, read a novel, or you would have read car comics. Well, why did we read the comics? They had pictures and the pictures kind of helped with the story. And, and it, it drew us in, well, when you're a little child, you kind of need that little bit of extra help to really draw you in. And I think like I like Terry was saying, you need to make sure that the pictures are telling the story correctly, as much as possible, but as long as you know, it, it does a pretty good job. And we like it. I think we're fine. It's just, and also understand it's not a Bible translation, it's a storybook, but the storybook definitely helps to point the child towards Jesus. And that's the ultimate goal of them reading these things.

Terrie: Do you have anything to add as we finish up with Bible stories today?

Dave: No. I just think I think these were some really good choices. I remember the ones I couldn't tell you the name of the one I read when I was kid. I do remember that it was bigger. It was like a regular you know letter sized, you know, paper, the book was that size. So it was a bigger book and some of these are smaller, you know? So that's something to consider too, when you're looking at kids, they, they like bigger books, I think, but otherwise these were good, good choices.

Terrie: Well, thank you so much, Dave, for joining us again, and thank you for joining us as our listeners. We hope that you were blessed today and that you got some ideas for choosing the right Bible storybook for your kids and can start sharing the Bible with them and opening up great discussions about our wonderful God and what his plan is for their life. Thank you for joining us for books that spark a podcast, celebrating books, spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope our discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of this podcast. And my blog, my website is terriehellardbrown.com. When you join my mailing list, you automatically have several freebies that you can download and enjoy with your kids.

Your Host:

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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this episode we take a break from the seriousness of life and laugh at some fun and humorous books.

"A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's strength." (Proverbs 17:22, NLT)

Books recommended in this episode:

Transcript:Welcome to Books that Spark, a podcast for parents and caregivers where we review books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and conversations leading to teachable moments with our kids.

Today, with all the seriousness of our times and the stress people are under with school changes, illness, finances, and the whole political arena, I want to talk about the importance of laughter and play for our children. We are very blessed in the kid lit marketplace to have some great books that can make us laugh together.

The Bible tells us in Proverbs 17:22, "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's strength." (NLT) And we certainly can feel that sometimes, that we just don't have as much energy as we usually do because we are burdened by what's going on in our lives.

Play is important work for a child. Laughing is excellent for a child's spiritual and emotional well-being, but it also stretches their lungs and helps them feel better physically as well. So, having fun together and laughing together is not only fun, it's excellent for your child's well-being.

Learning humor helps a child understand culture. We lived overseas, and I always found it interesting what each culture finds humorous. I also found out how we can offend others with our humor cross-culturally…and that's a very important lesson to learn quickly when you go to another culture!

Plus, it is very important for children to develop the ability to laugh at themselves. Once they cross that threshold, they will find it easier to have and keep friends and to be happier in social situations.

Think back to your childhood, most likely some of your favorite memories were when you were laughing and having fun with your family. Sharing humorous books with your children can create some fun memories with the whole family. It's healthy and good for you and your kids to do this together besides making memories, and it helps your child to develop in his understanding of cultural and social interactions. So, there are a lot of benefits of reading funny stories together besides it just being fun and a nice break.

I'm sharing with you some of my favorite silly books today, but there are so many available. The main warning that I will give you is to read a book before you share it. I found some books that say they are funny to either be empty, not really have a story to them, and not very funny at all, but more strange than funny. And I found some to have humor I found inappropriate, although I know some kids enjoy that more. In addition, be aware that very young children will have trouble understanding sarcasm. We have to with any books we're reading think about our child's developmental age and what they'll be able to process. So, we should always look at the book before we read them to our children.

We all should know the story of The Three Little Pigs. But have you heard the story from the Wolf's perspective? It's an old book called The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf as told to John Scieszka and illustrated Lane Smith. "Everybody knows the story of the three little pigs, or at least they think they do. But I'll let you in on a little secret. Nobody knows the real story because nobody has ever heard my side of the story. I'm the wolf. Alexander T. Wolf, you can call me Al. I don't know how this whole 'big bad wolf' thing got started, but it's all wrong. Maybe it's because of our diet. Hey, it's not my fault wolves eat cute little animals like bunnies and sheep and pigs. That's just the way we are. If cheeseburgers were cute, folks would probably think you're big and bad too."

Then he tells his side of the story. The pigs are very impolite throughout the story, and the wolf has a cold, so he sneezes, and the straw house fell down killing the first pig. He didn't want to waste food, so he ate him. He goes through the rest of the story, and at the end he says, "The news reporters found out about the two pigs I had for dinner. They figured a sick guy going to borrow a cup of sugar didn't sound very exciting, so they jazzed up the story with all of that huff and puff and blow your house down. And they made me the big bad wolf. That's it. The real story. I was framed.

If you haven't read this one, you should. It's a fun one. And there are quite a few different fractured fairy tales and fairy tales where they fix the fairy tales and retellings of fairy tales with a twist, that are so much fun. And some are not appropriate for some children, so do vet them ahead of time, read them ahead of time and make sure they are appropriate for your child. Some of them are truly hysterical. One of my favorites is actually a version of Hansel and Gretel which is not appropriate for certain ages of children because the kids in the story are not well-behaved and they have a lot of sarcasm, but for an older child, they would really enjoy it. I didn't put that one in the program exactly just because I know for little children it wouldn't really be good. But I will put that in the show notes in case you're interested in looking at that particular story for a little bit older elementary, middle school kid. And this same writer has other funny fairy tale retellings that are irreverent and silly that I think older kids might enjoy.

Another fun, hilarious story is called Carnivores. It's by Erin Reynolds, illustrated by Dan Sintat. It starts out, "The Lion is known throughout the animal kingdom as the king of the beasts. The great white shark is the most feared predator in the oceans. And the timber wolf's howl strikes terror into the hearts of fuzzy woodland creatures everywhere. But even savage carnivores get their feelings hurt. The lion tries to ignore it when the gazelles whisper behind his back. He pretends not to see the zebras looking down their noses at him. The wildebeests call him "bad kitty" just because he's eaten half the neighborhood. It hurts; it really does. The great white shark, he gets such a bad rap. All those shark movies don't help. Everyone talks about his feeding frenzies. But he's simply a fast- eater. Nobody understands."

So, in the story they try to go vegetarian. Toward the end, we finally understand this is who they are, and we should accept them as they are—that they aren't bad for being who they were meant to be.

Most of Mo Willems books range from heartwarming and silly to outright hilarious. One of my favorites is Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs. It starts out, "Once upon a time there were three dinosaurs: Papa Dinosaur, Mama Dinosaur, and some other dinosaur who happened to be visiting from Norway."

So, from the beginning your children will laugh because Willems has changed the story unexpectedly. In the original Three Bears story, they are oblivious to this girl coming to their home. However, in Willems' book, the dinosaurs have an evil plot.

It says, "One day, for no particular reason, the three dinosaurs made up their beds, positioned their chairs just so, and cooked three bowls of delicious chocolate pudding at varying temperatures.

"'Oh boy,' said Papa Dinosaur in his loud, booming voice. 'It is finally time to leave and go to the—uh—some place else.'

"'Yes!' continued Mama Dinosaur. 'I hope no innocent little succulent child happens by our unlocked home while we are…uh….some place else!'

"Then the other Dinosaur made a loud noise that sounded like a big, evil laugh but was probably just a polite Norwegian expression. The three Dinosaurs went Someplace Else and were definitely not hiding in the woods waiting for an unsuspecting child to come by."

Willems also brings in reality which every kid will enjoy. It says, "Sure enough, five minutes later a poorly supervised little girl named Goldilocks came traipsing along."

Throughout the book is talks about how she doesn't listen to people and is poorly supervised, so it's kind of funny. Throughout the story are surprises, but it follows the basic story except that everything is huge because they are dinosaurs. Goldilocks comments, "The bears that live here must be nuts." Then, she looks around and starts to realize it's not the bears' house, but it is some dinosaurs' house, and she escapes out the back door.

The story has two morals. One: If you find yourself in the wrong story, leave. And for dinosaurs: Lock the backdoor.

Another one of my favorites is by Ryan T. Higgins. It's called We Don't Eat Our Classmates. This one is perfect for the start of school too, so it's a great one to get right now. Penelope is a T-Rex, and Higgins puts right in the front of the book a disclaimer to the kids that no T-Rex will eat them because T-Rexes are extinct which is very kind of him to help our children not to be afraid.

Penelope is very nervous about her first day of school. She asks questions and gets her backpack ready, and when she gets to school the next day, she learns that her classmates are children! And children are delicious, so she eats them.

The teacher tells her, "We don't eat our classmates," so she spits them out. The next picture shows the kids all covered with slobbers. They don't want to be her friend anymore. We can talk with our kids what it means to be a friend and when we lose our friend's trust it is sometimes hard to get it back. She tries to tell her classmates they can sit by her, but they are too afraid. She is very sad and alone. The next day she tries really, really hard not to eat her friends, but she couldn't stop herself and she eats one boy. A child tattles and she spits him out.

So, all the students won't go near her. They don't trust her. She's very sad. But then she sees the goldfish Walter, and she says, "Will you be my friend." She puts her finger in the bowl, and the fish looks at her and "Chomp!" bites her finger. She screams and says, "He's eating me!" and realizes being eaten hurts!

She eventually is able to make friends with her classmates and not eat them. She understands how to be a better friend. This book has a lot of cute themes throughout that, even though it is funny, it may open up some great conversations about school and making new friends, keeping a friend's trust, and thinking about how others feel when we do what we do.

A perfect book to read today since it's Tuesday is Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin and illustrated by Daniel Salmieri. It starts out, "Hey, kid! Did you know that dragons love tacos? They love beef tacos and chicken tacos. They love really big gigantic tacos and tiny little baby tacos as well." But then we are warned that dragons hate spicy salsa. So, the boy in the book plans a party for the dragons, but of course, he accidentally gives them spicy salsa. Soon everything is destroyed as the dragons burn down everything. The story ends with the dragons helping to rebuild everything.

It is just a silly story, very entertaining, very funny, but it is so much fun to read. And I love how the dragons help after they made such a mess of everything.

Another goofy book is Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang and illustrated by Max Lang. I love this book. One beautiful day Monkey named Jim wakes up grumpy, but he keeps insisting he's not grumpy. Everyone has ideas of how to make him feel better and keeps asking him why he's grumpy until he explodes, insisting he's not grumpy. He walks away and sits by himself and realizes that maybe he is grumpy. His friend Norman the gorilla comes by, and Monkey asks if he's grumpy too because he looks upset. He says, no, that he had been dancing with porcupine, and he has quills he's pulling out of his hind end.

They sit on a tree, and Monkey asks if he still hurts, and he says yes, but he thinks he'll feel better tomorrow. Then he asks Monkey if he's still grumpy, and he says yes, but he thinks he'll feel better tomorrow too. Norman says, "It's a wonderful day to be grumpy."

Both of them start feeling a little better.

I love that this book is about feelings and understanding that they are temporary. I love that all the friends like to try to help, but it also shows that sometimes it's better just to sit with someone rather than trying to fix their problem or change their mood. It's a cute, funny book with a lot to offer.

Two alphabet books are very funny. One is P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter, illustrated by Maria Tina Beddia. This whole book is about words that don't follow the rules of pronunciation. E is for ewe, A is for aisle and aeon. It's a great book for introducing these wacky words and to give your kids some great new vocabulary words. It's a fun book to read and try to pronounce all the words in it. I would say this book is for a little bit older kid. It would be too much for a really young kid who is literally just learning their alphabet. But for older kids who already know the alphabet and phonics and know how to read, I think it would be a fabulous book to read with them.

Another one that I love that would work with younger children who know the alphabet and are still learning is A Is for Salad by Mike Lester. A is for salad shows an alligator eating a salad. B is for Viking shows a beaver dressed as a Viking. So, each picture has a word that matches the letter shown, but the page chooses the wrong part of the picture for its line. Kids will have fun correcting each page with the word that matches. It's really cute and a lot of fun. It will make really young children crack up.

But Not the Hippopotamus is a book by Sandra Boynton. This is a cute book. The animals are all doing things together except for the hippo. Finally, the animals invite the hippo to join them, and he joins in, but not the armadillo. This is a cute board book that shows that someone can be left out if we aren't careful. And when we include someone, we need to see if someone else is being left out. Boynton also has several other funny books. Some about hippopotamuses. They are very cute and entertaining. I love her books. They are fun.

Giggle, Giggle, Quack is a great book. I love it because the child infers information throughout the story. A farmer goes on vacation and leaves instructions for his brother to take care of the farm, but he warns his brother to watch out for the duck because he's trouble and a bad influence on the other animals. It's so funny. Kids will love it. I don't want to give away the story, but it really is adorable.

Some oldies that are still fun to read are any of the Amelia Bedelia books by Peggy Parish. She has several different illustrators for her different books. Each of these books has a play on words throughout the story, and the children have so much fun realizing she has misunderstood and is doing the completely wrong thing. In one book she's told to dust the furniture which she thinks is very strange, but she gets powder and puts dust all over the furniture. In another book, she checks her boss's shirts by literally painting checks on them and removes the spots on Mrs. Roger's dress by cutting out the polka dots. These are great books for learning to play with words, understanding literal and figurative meanings, and it helps kids anticipate the reaction of her bosses when they see what's she done.

Another book that plays on the literal versus the figurative meaning of words is the book Just a Minute by Teddy Slater, illustrated by Dana Regan. It also teaches math for grades K-2 and has math activities by Marilyn Burns. Fred wants to share his picture with his family, but everyone keeps telling him "Just a minute." Then his brother tells him he needs to walk the dog, and Fred says, "Just a minute." In the meantime, the dog has an accident on the floor. So, they have to talk about how long a minute is. And everyone learns not to say "Just a minute" unless they really mean it. You're dealing with math and the length of time a minute is, but you're also dealing with the figurative language when we say, "Just a minute." It could mean 15 minutes or half and hour if we're not careful.

Also, when thinking of middle schoolers, another great series of books that are humorous but educational are the Horrible History series and the books related to those. These are certainly not going to be appropriate for young children. They deal with a lot of disgusting things from history, but those books, in particular, helped all of my kids develop a love for history. And it helped them so much to just jump into their educational history books, the curriculum they had to learn, but they had such a fascination by then with what really happened in the past. So, I do recommend those for the middle schoolers and high schoolers if you're okay with the rough edges in those books.

Many picture books and board books share humor. Some are meant to make you laugh out loud, but others just make us smile at the subtle humor. Either way, they can be a blessing to you and your family as you share them together and take a break from the heaviness and seriousness of life now and then. And remember, you're always creating wonderful memories with your kids as you do this.

Thank you for joining us today for Books that Spark, a podcast, celebrating books, that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions. I hope these books will spark meaningful conversations with your kids. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of this podcast and my blog. My website is terriehellardbrown.com.

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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

#kidlit #booksthatspark #readaloudbooks

In this episode we have the second part of my interview with best-selling author Deb Gruelle. We celebrate her book launch of Sleepy Time Colors, her second children's book, a companion to her best-selling book Ten Little Night Stars. We discuss the benefits of reading to our children.

Books Suggested in the Episode:

Transcript:

Terrie: Welcome to Books that Spark a podcast for parents and caregivers, where we review books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and conversations, leading to teachable moments with our kids. Today, we have the second part of my interview with author Deb Gruelle. Deb is a bestselling and award-winning author for children and adults. She writes for children to entertain and offer them a sense of security. Yes, she's related to Johnny Gruelle, the creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, and she loves being a third-generation writer for children. She feels honored to share stories with children to enrich their childhood memories and writes for adults to offer them hope. A recovering technical writer, Gruelle's also authored a book on infertility for women, over 100 articles for national women's and parenting magazines, as well as storyboards for children's games. She also serves as chaplain for Inspire Christian Writers, teaches at writer's conferences, and has fun spreading her love for children's literacy at school author visits. Thank you for joining us again today, Deb, for another interview. I'm so glad you're here.

Deb: It's my pleasure, Terrie. I'm so glad to be here with you today.

Terrie: Well, today is an exciting day. Would you like to tell our listeners why this is such an exciting day?

Deb: Today is the day my newest book comes out Sleepy Time Colors, and it's my second children's book, and it's a board book. And I am really thrilled that it is finally here. Yay!

Terrie: And for anyone who goes to my website and comments on the blog, you will be entered in a drawing to possibly win a free copy of this new book, sleepy time colors. So please go by, we're having this contest open until the 15th. So, before time is up, go to my blog and just make any comment. Say, "Yay, Deb, for your new book!" or whatever, and you'll be entered in the drawing to possibly win a copy of her new book, Sleepy Time Colors. My website is terriehellardbrown.com. So, congratulations. I'm so excited for you.

Deb: Thank you so much, Terrie. It's really fun.

Terrie: Well, we wanted to take this time to go ahead and do a second interview and talk a little bit more about how books and reading with our children can help them with feelings of insecurity and uncertain times because we certainly are living in uncertain times right now with all that's going on in our culture. So how can reading with kids help during these times of uncertainty?

Deb: I think that the first thing is that reading allows us to slow down because it's hard to read while you're walking or running or going places. And especially if parents and kids are reading together, it just allows that connection in this space of a slowdown that you can journey together into books. You can read books that are specifically for comfort, but also, you know, a book that will—I'm thinking of the little house series, those books, you get to travel in time. And, and those books are very comforting. They have problems that they encounter on the Prairie, but there's a resolution to them, a gentle resolution. And I think many of her books ended up at Christmas. So, it has this seasonal piece to it, which is also a great thing, just to be reminded what's happening to us right now is going to pass. It is not going to be here forever. And we can just spend time in books with our kids, that we can get a break from the reality that's going on and we can connect with each other. So, you know, there's picture books that you can do that with, especially if your child really enjoys the book, you're gonna help them enter into a peaceful, fun, or exciting journey together.

Terrie: I've heard of some kids who grab their favorite stuffed animal and their favorite book when they need to be comforted. And that's their happy place. That book and stuffed animal, there's that comfort there? I love that.

Deb: I remember just sitting and reading with my kids is very comforting to me as a, a mom too, when there are just so many things we can't control deaths in the family and, and financial worries and things like that. But you can just compartmentalize a little bit and just, that's not good to do that and not connect your life, but to not give a concern or anxiety reign over your whole life. I remember one time we were going through a period that just the anxiety was really high in our family. And we set aside a time and let's talk about that for 20 minutes a night. Anybody who wants to say anything about it can, and then we're going to focus on other things for the rest of the time so that that doesn't take over our whole life. We couldn't change the outcome that was going to happen, but we could change just how we lived and to not set aside all the good things and let that anxiety overwhelm the rest of life.

Terrie: Two things I've heard that help kids to identify as part of the family and to feel secure are the dinner table and the bedtime routine. And I love that your books, both of your children's books deal with that bedtime routine. Could you touch on that a little bit?

Deb: Oftentimes picture books look deceptively simple, but there is an underlying theme or message. And that is in my books to be comforting to kids because the first one I wrote when my dad had just died and I thought, how do I fill this hole for my children? I couldn't, I could not fix that, but I whittled it down to what I could do. And what I could do was to first be intentional and second do small things every day that would help them feel that they knew what was coming next and that they were loved and that together, those things would help make them feel secure and more resilient to the difficult things that happen in life. So, my books are about teaching kids about counting and colors, but underneath is this theme that I hope it resonates with kids of, "I feel secure enough that I can go to sleep."

Terrie: What are some of the other benefits of reading besides helping a child feel secure?

Deb: Well, I think it's the connection that there's a, something that happens in children's minds. If they're sitting in your lap and they feel the comfort and they have their favorite blankie or stuffed animal, and they will equate that with reading. And so that will encourage them to read more. So, there's all sorts of studies that show that vocabulary, kids who read or read to have a much larger vocabulary than children who are not read to. And what a great gift that is to give a child and just in learning, they can become stronger learners. I don't ever want to make parents feel guilty for not doing what they can't do, but this is just an encouragement that if you think this doesn't mean anything, that I'm spending five minutes or 10 minutes at night, reading to my child, it is meaningful just that little bit of time can over time accumulate to a really great gift.

Terrie: I agree. Yeah. One of the things I'm seeing--I've been a teacher for over 20 years and in more recent years when we've seen kind of more going towards video and video games and not so much reading my students aren't able to comprehend what they're reading at the same level that they could when reading was more, a part of our daily culture and our daily lives, like you said, five, 10 minutes with our kids, helping them to enjoy a story from beginning to end and comprehending what you're reading, what you're being told is a tremendous gift to help them succeed even into their high school years. Even talking about the story afterwards. And a lot of times young children will ask questions in the middle of a story it's showing comprehension. And, Oh, my goodness, that helps so much with their grades in their later years of schooling, even into middle school and high school. It starts when they're preschoolers and we're reading that little five-minute bedtime story to them. We really, we can't discount that at all. I think parents should feel very happy and encourage that they are doing a great thing. Like you said, giving their children a great gift as they read together.

Deb: Absolutely. And sometimes that's hard for parents because parenting can be so cyclical. And you think at the end of the day, do I have anything to show for today? You know, maybe yeah. I took a shower. Yeah. It was really great. And you think, you know, I read to my kid, but does that really add up to anything? And it is, it's amazing. You don't see it. It's cumulative effect that it also can help extend their focus. I had two children with severe ADHD and studies have shown that reading to your children helps them focus longer, a different thing than the video games and things like that. So it's a good thing. It's it just is. If you start looking into it, you can find so many positives for reading with your children. And just the fact that you're stopping your world and saying, I'm going to do this with you. Is something we both enjoy. I think that has a lot of power to say what's happening in life is not going to overwhelm us. We're going to stop and enjoy each other and be there for each other in the midst of what's going on. And that sends a signal to the child that it's going to be okay.

Terrie: Yeah, we're in this together. So, reading to a child, it helps them make that connection. You're usually even physically closer to the child while you're reading, you're creating that circle with them and it's adds a comfort and security. So, you have that physicality of touch of, of talking together, being together. If you add into that, like we said, the vocabulary, the reading comprehension, and even the realizing that we are placing a priority, not only on our relationship with our child and giving our time to our children, but our priority on reading and that we value that. And we see that as important. Then builds that same love for reading in our child or at least that they understand it's important, even if they don't love it. Because I know some children have dyslexia or other challenges, so it's a hard thing for them to embrace, but they can see that at least we place importance on it and that it has a place of importance in our lives and education.

Deb: Yes. And I think kids with dyslexia, it's important to read to them longer. I think, I just think how frustrating it would be to want to know the story and get stopped by not being able to decode the words and having someone read to you. We'll still get that story into you without you having to work so hard at the decoding. So, it can, if you can do that for longer as a parent, it's helpful. I just want to ask you too. Have you heard of the books printed in the dyslexic font?

Terrie: No, I haven't. Tell me about that.

Deb: The only thing that I know is when a fairly small publisher I'm looking at McLaren Cochran publishing has started printing books in this dyslexic font that is supposed to be easier for children or people who have it, but they do children's books. So, they like redid the Wizard of Oz and it doesn't have any--it's san serif. It doesn't have the little short lines on all the letters. And it's just, so I was listening to teachers at a reading conference, the California reading conference, and they were discussing the different fonts that some of them are much easier for kids with dyslexia to read.

Terrie: I have not heard about that. That is great. What we do naturally as a parent with reading to them, with helping them, being active with our children—all of these things help our kids and it helps them in their reading ability. And it helps them cross over some of the challenges they might be facing later in school. We're laying a huge foundation for them when we're reading to them. Some of the things that can really help your child, your preschooler, become an avid reader is making sure they crawl. If they skipped crawling, get down on the ground with them and crawl around, do an army crawl. The other thing you can do is march with them. It may seem silly, but that something as a parent that you can do with your little preschooler. Doing that movement--the left hand and the right leg or the right hand and the left leg are moving at the same time—dancing, marching, crawling. That will help their reading ability. The other thing, is as we're reading to them aloud, and they're reading along, but they should naturally pick up phonics and naturally begin teach themselves to read, or they should have a desire to read. So, if you're not seeing that in your child, or if there is a disconnect somehow in there, then we know there is a red flag. It may be nothing. But it also could be a sign that we need to be watching for an auditory problem. I had one student in one of my kindergarten classes. She was always cheating off everyone's paper. I'm like, what is she doing? You know, I would have these little quizzes where I would say draw a green circle or draw a blue square, so they could practice their shapes and colors and following directions. And she would always look on someone else's paper. I should have realized she wasn't hearing me, but she always answered so well. She had learned so many coping mechanisms even by Kindergarten to cover up her hearing loss that we didn't catch it. Her parents didn't catch it, and I didn't catch it. We finally had her tested. And she needed glasses and she had hearing loss. She had so much going on. We felt so bad for giving her a hard time when she was just learning to cope with what she was dealing with. So, I'm a huge proponent for early intervention. I know, as parents, we don't want to have our kids pigeonholed. We're afraid of getting them tested too soon. We don't want them to be put into a box, but there is such a benefit to early intervention; it can make a huge difference. In my own son's life, having early intervention helped him to be successful through school even with dealing with autism. He just graduated from high school. He loved school, and he had a lot of friends, and it was all, I believe, due to his Kindergarten teacher and having him diagnosed at the age of five. So, it's amazing what early intervention can do.

Deb: Yes, I'm hoping there's more openness to understanding that kids' brains work differently. And if you can see if people have done enough study to see if their brain works this way, try this, because it seems to have helped other people whose brains also work that way. That's a great thing. You don't want them labeled for labels sake. You want them to have information about other brains that are similar to their so that they can work with that information to, to eliminate 700 other options and try that one as a priority.

Terrie: And finding the right thing that will help them. That's an awesome thing.

Deb: As a parent to focus on what is going wrong. But the other part to connect back to what we were talking about is that of studies have also shown that kids, students learn better when they feel safe. So as a parent, if you, you can create that environment of comfort and, and relate it to learning, some of the barriers are down. So, it just, I just know, I kept focusing on this is the problem. How do I get past this problem? And I guess just in treating the child as a whole person, that those emotions are happening at the same time. And it's good to deal with those at the same time.

Terrie: Yeah. And you learn to accept who your kid is and how to best help them succeed. And we do that with all kids, whether they have a learning disability or not. And so whether it's dealing with a disability, a quirkiness in their personality, or a fascination with dinosaurs, we're just as parents, we're feeding into that and helping them to find joy and find success and reading has a lot to do with. So, when we're talking about fear and anxiety, we should be conscious of what books say and how that translates for each child's developmental age. How can we determine what is best for each age group of children?

Deb: It's like other hard subjects. As a parent, you have to know your child, know what they're ready for, know what they're capable of handling. And you just answer as truthfully, as you can, as simply as you can. Like kids who have asked where babies come from, you don't go into a long discourse on it for a two year old. You answer very succinctly. And, and the question that they're actually asking at that point, they're not asking for a medical list of all the things they're asking for. There was nobody there now, and now there's a baby here. How did that happen? So, I think the same thing is to, to answer simply if kids are asking questions about why are people wearing masks, then you, you just answered that question simply. And if they there's just their options of, if they're showing fear from that, it's really hard on kids because you can't see smiles behind masks, and they might not want to wear a mask and just things have changed. And it's you can do things like have a craft that is let's make masks and put it into a different context rather than a fearful context. So, there's lots of those options online of make a mass with your kid. And it will be very different than a COVID mask, but it will be something that they can relate, Oh, that maybe is similar to what people are wearing. It doesn't change their face. It's just something in front of their face.

Terrie: I read one cute book called Lucy's Mask. That deals specifically with COVID and the mask wearing. And I thought they handled it really in a cute way. The little girl, Lucy, starts out with like a Batman mask or Halloween mask, and she's thinking about how she can wear the mask and she can do this and be this kind of person. And she ends of talking about, "And I can be a superhero!" And then her mom is making her a COVID mask to wear. And so she puts that one on and her mom says, "Now you're really a superhero. With this kind of mask you're helping protect people." And I thought it handled the subject really well. And in the show notes, I'll have this information.

Deb: That's wonderful. Sounds like a great book.

Terrie: One thing though, I did notice in some of the books, because I'm vetting several different books dealing with COVID. Some of them, I think, like you said, they give too much information. And so we have to be aware before we read the book to our children what level it's really speaking to. There was one that it's really good, and it has a lot of good information, but I wouldn't read it to my preschooler. I think it gives too much information and might add to their concern or their fear. I would read it to an elementary child, third through fifth grade. But even in that, there were some of the statements in the book that I felt were a little too over generalized. Like one page says, "Everyone is catching COVID." Well, no, not everyone is catching COVID. Thank goodness. So, if you read that, you would want to discuss it with your child and say, "The writer was exaggerating here." But definitely make sure, you know, that each book is geared toward your child's developmental age. Therefore, they'll be able to relate to the book much better.

Deb: That's the balance. And I had one kid who had an incredible imagination, which was a super gift, but it also, it was hard for him to shut it off. So, if I had to be more careful with that child to not stimulate that imagination in the wrong way, because he then couldn't go to sleep. He would just be concerned about things at a, he made connections of huge events and I could see, he felt very, unpowerful like all these huge things, you know, what if hurricanes came to our house, what if an earthquake came? What if, and he was maybe three or four and these, the weather, it was enough to make him very concerned. So, we got books that talked about weather, but I did would never have let him watch the news, or if it was a bad, you know, after a tornado when people were homeless. And I knew that that child's mind needed to not be exposed to that at that young age.

Terrie: So, what are some books that you would recommend to help with dealing with fear and anxiety with young children? Do you know of some good ones you could recommend?

Deb: One is called a Stay through the Storm, and it's just a book by Joanna Rowland. It's a book about a storm is coming and these two little girls decide to stay with each other while the storm comes and they, you know, make a little blanket tent and, and they hang out together and eat popcorn. The symbolism is we'll hang on to each other while the storms of life come past us. She she's a, I think a pre-K teacher. And so she just knows that age really well and does a good job of not introducing things that aren't appropriate for that age. And then she also wrote another one called When Things Are Hard, Remember, and it's, it's talking about loss and that you can put together a memory box of maybe a grandparent who died and you can pick up things of cards or something around your house that reminds you of them. And then when you feel lonely, you can look in that box and remember them. And so the story is this little child going through that process. And I thought that was a really tactical way to bring a big idea down to a small child's viewpoint and give them a tool to help deal with it.

Terrie: As we're finishing up today. Deb, again, thank you for being with us and giving us your time. Can you just tell us a little bit more about your brand new book that's launching today, Sleepy Time Colors.

Deb: It's Sleepy Time Colors. It's a lift the flap book, Zonderkidz made it a lift, the flap book, and it has wonderful illustrations by Gabi Murphy. She was also the illustrator on my first children's book, Ten Little Night Stars that came out two years ago. And it's a bedtime story with sleepy time rhymes that as cuddly animals, the same animals from Ten Little Night Stars getting ready for bed and taking a bath and putting their favorite jammies on. And they're their favorite colors. And they're excited to get these cozy pajamas on and it ends with falling asleep. So I just think of it as, as an a love story to cozy pajamas because I love getting cozy in my pajamas, and my kids didn't do it. Was that sense that the day was winding down and we were stopping rushing, and we got to just snuggle and shut the door on the world.

Terrie: And I love the illustrations. The pictures are just so lovable. They're just beautiful and the colors are gorgeous. And so, it's a fun book to read and to see the pictures together with your kids and think about going to sleep and having a nice sleep.

Deb: Yes, and I love the big, big tummies on the, on the baby animals and their little emotions that come out through the illustrations. Very cute. I can say that because I have no illustration ability at all. So I admire Gabi's.

Terrie: Oh, I know me too. I'm always amazed at the illustrators and how they can just bring a story to life. You have last time, you mentioned that on your website, if people go to your website, they can find some lesson plans to go along with this new book.

Deb: I love to use picture books as a way to teach and, and these lesson plans are six days that each day focuses on a different color and the colors found in the book and that gives a craft or fun things that you can do along with it to learn each color. So, I hope kids enjoy those.

Terrie: And you have one that's focused on the general public and then one that's for Christian teachers or parents as well, right?

Deb: Yes. So, they can choose which one they would like. And that is interesting. That's one of the other things I think in comforting children is we, as parents, learn a lot from raising our kids and in dealing with their anxiety, we really have to learn to deal with our own as well. And I think that when God has comforted us, we then learn how to comfort our children. And so, there are verses that he has given us to remind us we are not alone. And if one sheep is lost, he will go after that one and, and make sure that that one sheep is safe and will not leave it out there alone and lost. And that's the verse of Matthew and those verses, we can share the comfort that we receive from God, with our children.

Terrie: Speaking of that, Deb, do you know of any books you would recommend to help parents to cope with the anxiety they might be feeling?

Deb: I think there's some amazing books written to deal with fear, and I've read a number of them. And one of them, a general market book is The Gift of Fear, and that just tells us what can, what benefit we can get from recognizing our fear and paying attention to it. So, it's not always a negative just to be pushed down, but one that in the Christian market that helped me with fear was a Max Lucado's book, Fearless. And the subtitle is, Imagine Your Life without Fear. And that helped me realize how I had let anxiety or fear creep into parts of my life that I thought this was normal, and reading this and just picturing what could my life be like if I did not have fear and I really trusted God with everything that was happening. And it just opened my mind up to thinking there are other options in this.

Terrie: All right. Well, thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to leave us with or how can we best support you?

Deb: Well, first I would just like to say to parents, this is a really tough time, and you are doing a great job in whatever you can do. And if your kids are acting out or angry or they're showing different symptoms, then you wouldn't really identify it as anxiety. It still can be this underlying thing that sometimes we, you know, snap when we feel an underlying anxiety and we have to stop and figure out where did that come from? And now we can blame everything on COVID, but just that process of stopping and recognizing this is not my normal child. And can we take a minute to think about what's going on and communicate about it? It may seem like a little thing, but again, that, that effort to do that over time can build emotional resilience with your children.

Terrie: Well, thank you so much. I look forward to talking with you again another time, but thank you for sharing your book launch with us, and we wish you all the best with your new book.

Deb: Thank you for celebrating with me.

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 in your life. Remember Deb's new book, Sleepy Time Colors, lunch today. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to Deb's website, lesson plans, and more. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of this podcast. And my blog, my website is terriehellardbrown.com.

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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

#Zonderkidz #sleepytimecolors #booksthatspark

In this episode, we get to talk with Deb Gruelle about what sparked the ideas for her two board books Ten Little Night Stars and Sleepy Time Colors. Join us as we talk about the importance of a bedtime routine and what it means in a child's life.

Check out Deb's website: https://debgruelle.com/

Giveaway for August 1-15: You could win a copy of Deb's newest book: Sleepy Time Colors. Comment on my blog between August 1-15, 2020 to be entered into the drawing: https://terriehellardbrown.com/blog/

Transcript: Welcome to Books that Spark, a podcast for parents and caregivers where we review books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and conversations leading to teachable moments with our kids.

Today we have a special guest with us, Deb Gruelle. Deb is a bestselling and award-winning author for children and adults. She writes for children to entertain and offer them a sense of security. Yes, she's related to Johnny Gruelle, the creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, and she loves being a third-generation writer for children in her family. She feels honored to share stories with children to enrich their childhood memories and writes for adults to offer them hope.

On August 11, 2020 Gruelle's newest children's book Sleepy Time Colors releases. A companion book to her bestselling going-to-bed and counting picture book, Ten Little Night Stars, (with over 125,00 copies sold) Sleepy Time Colors helps children feel secure enough to fall asleep while teaching them colors.

A recovering technical writer, Gruelle's also authored a book on infertility for women, over 100 articles for national women's and parenting magazines, as well as storyboards for children's games. The second edition of her nonfiction book, Aching for a Child, releases later this year.

She serves as chaplain for Inspire Christian Writers (inspirewriters.com).

Terrie: We're so glad you're here with us today, Deb. Thank you for joining us again today.

Deb: Thanks, Terrie, I'm so glad to be here.

Terrie: So, first of all, I love your book Ten Little Night Stars; I've given it as gifts to a few people already. Can you tell us a little bit about your two books Ten Little Night Stars and Sleepy Time Colors?

Deb: Sure! I wrote Ten Little Night Stars when my youngest son was one year old. It took a long time to get it published though. I was back in California at the time, and my father had passed away. I stepped out of my mom's busy house with my one-year-old son on my hip. We were taking a breath of air from all the work that dealing with a death involves. You know, creating the memorial service and those things in the midst of grief. I just stood looking up at the sky, thinking about how far away my dad felt. He was such a rock. He gave us such a sense of security. He had such integrity and loved the Lord. And I wondered, how I would be able to pass that sense of security on to my children? Because he wouldn't be around to do it. And so, as I held my son, I thought about that huge hole in our lives that my dad's passing had left. I wondered if I could step into those shoes in any way. And as I was thinking about that, the first star appeared in the sky. I pointed to it and said to Matthew, "Look, one little night star." He copied me and pointed to the star too. That line just kept going through my head. So, that line along with the longing to pass on a sense of the security my dad had offered was what compelled me to start writing. I started writing Ten Little Night Stars that night. I tried to sell it to a couple of places; it didn't sell, so it went into a drawer for 16 years until I was going to a writer's conference. I thought, why don't I just take pull this one out of the drawer and take this little children's book along with me? There happened to be a children's editor there for Zonderkidz, and Jillian liked it. That's how it was sold. It was definitely God's timing.

Terrie: It's been a couple years since it came out. And you having Sleepy Time Colors come out this August. How long has it been in between?

Deb: The first book came out in 2018, so it's about two-and-a-half years between them.

Terrie: And how did Sleepy Time Colors come about?

Deb: Well, this one happens to be inspired by my mom. She's the artist in our family. So colors matter to her. She is an award-winning artist, known for her paintings of warm ocean water. The artistic gene skipped my generation completely, because you wouldn't even recognize my stick figures as stick figures. (But my kids have artistic talent!) But my mom saw nuances of color everywhere, and sometimes it was hard for her to live in a family who didn't see or care as much about those colors. So it mattered to her that the family room carpet matched the linoleum in the kitchen when it was time to buy new carpet. But my dad was really practical and cared mostly about the budge. And nobody else could really see that it didn't match, except for her. It probably felt to her that she lived with a family that was color-blind, because she saw the world so differently. She was so thrilled one day when that changed. The house across the street was painted, and somebody said it was now blue. But my younger brother, Steve, said, "I think more of a blue-green color." My mom was so excited! "Wow! One of my kids can recognize color distinctions!" So, this book is for my mom and those who love color.

Terrie: That's so neat. Both of your books are about nighttime routine. So, how important is having a nighttime routine for children?

Deb: It's interesting. There are studies that show a nighttime routine for children is very important. When you think of the big idea: How can I pass on a sense of security to my children? It's in the little things that we do every day. We take a bath, then put on jammies, then read a book, then go to sleep. That sense of knowing what comes next becomes a small tradition that gives kids a really big sense of security. A parent can't control what is wrong in the world, but they can choose to shut the door on it for a moment and think, I'm going to take a minute from my crazy day to stop and simply focus with joy on my child for five minutes. Sometimes that's all it takes to read a children's book, but the child senses their parent has stopped and given them a few minutes of total, peaceful focus. And that can ground them to help them feel secure enough to fall asleep more easily.

Terrie: I love that. I know with my kids, if we change something suddenly, it's a catastrophe because three of them are on the autism spectrum. Routine is so vital to keeping them feeling secure and at ease.

Deb: It's even more important with some kids than others.

Terrie: Your books are educational as well. Do you think it is important to use story time to teach basic skills to our children?

Deb: That's interesting. One of the reviews for Ten Little Night Stars said it was "sneakily educational," and I really liked that because I first want to entertain. If the kids don't enjoy it, then they're not going to ask for it again, so I think that's got to be the primary goal. And then I want to convey an emotion through the book. The parent is really the hero of the story, and the book is just something they can use in the bonding process with their child. So, if I can evoke that emotion that helps the bonding between the parent and the child, that is my second goal. Then, if I can sneak in something that's educational in there, that's gravy. I just know as a mom, I really wanted to be a good mom. And I knew how important it was to read to my kids. I knew it mattered for their brain development. I knew it helped their vocabulary. You know, all those positive things, but I was often exhausted. So I wanted to provide a book that could be read in a very short time. Even with asking questions, it can take 8-10 minutes, and you've done something good for your child. You've bonded with them. And now they're ready to go to sleep, and you can too. Hopefully! I have such a tender heart for tired parents.

Terrie: You've written for the very young. Both of your books are board books. And that's the 0-3 range, correct?

Deb: I believe now it's 0-5 years, babies to preschool.

Terrie: Is there a reason you focused on that age? Do you plan to write books for older children at some point? Or is that just where your heart is?

Deb: Well, it's really interesting. My son happened to be one year old when I wrote it and my daughter was two. I wrote for those ages in mind. In fact, before my story was published, I typed and printed out the story and read it to my children from a three-pronged folder. I couldn't draw, so I only drew the bedroom window then illustrated the pages with stickers of children and stars. I'm so glad I didn't wait until it was published to read it to them! And I'm so grateful for Gabi Murphy, the beautiful illustrator for both books. The publisher, Zonderkidz, was the one who decided to make it into a board book.

Terrie: Why do you have such a passion for young children and tired parents?

Deb: I was a tired parent. I loved being a mom, but I had little energy because I had health issues. I didn't have a ton of energy to do a thousand things I wanted to do for my kids. I ended up homeschooling each of my kids at different times. I just had kids who were like square pegs trying to fit into the round holes of school. The school needed them to learn a certain way, and my kids were not that way. So that's why I ended up homeschooling all of them. So, I especially appreciate the desires of moms to want do the best they can for their kids, but that they still have limitations. If I can help make it easier for them to accomplish a good goal they have for their kids, then I feel like I've done a good thing.

Terrie: I think that any homeschooling parent is my hero. I've been a classroom teacher, and when I tried to homeschool my kids, I didn't do well with that, and my sister was a brilliant home school mom. Anyone who can homeschool, I think is amazing. When you're in the mindset of the classroom, and you try to shift gears, it's not always easy to do that.

Deb: Well, I admire both parents and teachers too. When my kids were little, I volunteered in both the nursery and preschool at church. And I would just be exhausted by the time church was over. I would immediately go home and take a nap! It was so difficult to handle all those kids at once too.

Terrie: Yes, that's true. It's a different skill set.

Deb: And depending on what your kids' needs are.

Terrie: My kids were misdiagnosed for … my two older ones, for years. That's when I was homeschooling. So basically, what I was doing was completely wrong for them.

Deb: You didn't know what they needed.

Terrie: And I felt like a horrible parent because I had studied special education in my Masters program. So I knew a little bit about these different things, but nothing was matching up. And that's the thing with autism: it presents differently with each kid. So, I wasn't seeing a pattern. What worked for one didn't work for the other. I was setting timers because I was told they had ADD. Well kids with ADD do better if you set a timer and say, "This is how long you need to work on this, and then you can be free." But it would stress my kids out and give them anxiety, and they would shut down. I'm just like Uh! I was going crazy with trying to figure it out. It wasn't the best of times for me.

Deb: Yes, I did the same thing. I spent a lot of time researching and trying to figure out, Why is my kid not fitting the norm? Both my boys had pretty severe ADD, and I did lots of research on that. How frustrating that would be to think you're doing what the research says would work and it not working.

Terrie: No, totally causing shut downs. It was not good.

Deb: Two of my kids were twice exceptional too. They had giftedness in some areas, and they also had learning disabilities. So, it was tricky to figure out. It took a long time to figure out their diagnoses.

Terrie: And I don't know if people understand if they're on the outside looking in. It is not an easy process to go through, to figure out, even if they're gifted, what's going to work best for them, how to best educate them, and just everything comes into play. It could be like treacherous waters sometimes.

Deb: Exactly. You have to be like a detective as a mom to figure out what worked yesterday and what didn't work today. My brother has dyslexia, and some days he could read, and some days he couldn't. And sometimes the teacher would get very frustrated and say, "I know you can do this. You're just choosing not to." It's really hard to know how best to help our kids.

Terrie: In this podcast we're talking a lot about how to start spiritual conversations with our children. How early can we start teaching them about God's love? And how can we encourage some of the moms who are overwhelmed with toddlers and all that's going on to bring those spiritual conversations into their relationship?

Deb: I was just reading a study today about reading to your children. It was talking about kids can understand so much before they can even respond in words to what you're doing and what you're saying. So, I would think from birth. When we pray with them, they will absorb what we're doing even if we think it isn't making sense to them. They can pick up on this is a comforting thing. This is a conversation with God, just like having a conversation with Dad or Mom. And we're just modeling our spiritual life. We don't have to be didactic about teaching at this age. We can simply live what we know to be true, and they will absorb it.

Terrie: That's good. My boss, I work for the Association Office here for the Baptist Churches, and my boss would talk about how people say that the teachers who are teaching babies don't have much responsibility. And he's like, "No, they're the most important." Because exactly what you said: they teach that God is comforting, that we can have peace when we pray. And he talked about that. He felt those teachers were the most important teachers in the church—those who worked with the babies and the nursery workers. I thought that was really awesome.

Deb: How good for him to recognize that. I agree.

Terrie: I thought it was interesting. I was reading the reviews for Ten Little Night Stars on Amazon, and one of the moms said, "They brought prayer into it." I thought that was funny since it was a Zonderkidz book. I thought readers would know it was a Christian book. Tell us a little bit about what spiritual aspects you introduced in Ten Little Night Stars.

Deb: It was interesting. Zonderkidz is a Christian publisher. But before I was an author, I wouldn't have necessarily known what publishers were known for. I wouldn't look at that when I bought a book. I would just choose the book. That being said, everyone has a right to their own opinion. Being a Christian, part of our kids' bedtime routine was saying prayers. That was just a very natural part of the day—sharing with God what we were grateful for that day or anything that concerned us or just telling Him we loved Him. Those were a very natural and important piece of life with my kids and a part of where my security comes from, so I included that. Also, one of the lines talks about the stars up in heaven. And the inspiration for this book came when my dad died and thinking about him up in heaven. So I used the word heaven, and somebody took offense at the word heaven also. But I know, you can't write for everyone. I'm hoping that it will introduce children just to the idea of a caring God. It's not a let's give the child theology and the whole Gospel message laid out book. But I hope it introduces the idea that there is a God who holds the stars in heaven and who also holds me. Just introducing that idea and being there to answer questions for children if the book brings them up, then parents can respond when they ask. What is heaven? What is prayer? When children are ready to learn more, parents can answer. That's how any book can spark questions and start a conversation when kids are ready for more.

Terrie: And how about the second book?

Deb: My second children's book, Sleepy Time Colors, is written as a general market book. It's another rhyming book about cuddly animals putting on their favorite jammies when it's time for bed. And how snuggly and cozy those pajamas are. And each animal has a different favorite color of pajamas. For this new one I'm also providing parent/teacher guides to teach children colors, I have one that's for parents who want to include the Christian aspects of why did God make colors? It's because He loved us and wanted us to enjoy beauty in the world. God could have created the whole world gray, but because of His love for us, He introduced beauty into our world. And colors are part of that beauty. So, the parent or teacher can choose which one they want to use to teach. It's six days of preschool curriculum that further introduces children to colors

Terrie: Oh, well that's awesome. So, you'll have resources for both markets. We'll have the link, I assume those will be on your website?

Deb: Yes, right now if you sign up for my newsletter, you'll receive the teaching guide as a free resource.

Terrie: I'll have that link in our show notes so people can access those. I want to ask you one more question, and then I think we'll be out of time for today. I know that you're involved with CASA. Can you tell us a little about this program and your passion for working with that organization?

Deb: Sure. I love being an adoptive mom. One of my children joined our family through adoption. We went through infertility for a long time, so for a big part of our life, we focused on building our family. I'm not able to adopt more children. But CASA is a way to help kids in foster care. It stands for Court Appointed Special Advocate. You can volunteer to help one child through the foster care system. You are legally appointed to be that child's CASA for the length of time that they are going through the court system as a child in foster care. I think it's a wonderful program because there is so much change in these children's lives. For one child I worked with, everything had changed in her life. The judge had changed, her attorney had changed multiple times, and so had her social worker. Her foster mom remained the same the whole time, which is often unusual. It's a great program to just be a voice for the child. Often the judge has a short time during court to decide what is best for a child. And the child could be with a new attorney or a new social worker at that point. CASAs add some continuity and are there as a voice for the child.

Terrie: Wow, that's amazing.

Deb: I think it's a very rewarding program.

Terrie: Well thank you so much for sharing with us today. I look forward to talking with you again. We will have another episode where we're going to talk about a little bit different topic. So, we'll look forward to that. How can we as listeners support you in your work and in your ministry?

Deb: Well, thanks, Terrie. If your listeners want to find me or connect with me, they can on social media. I mostly use Facebook and Instagram, and on my website, that would be wonderful!

Terrie: Well, we will have all those links in our show notes. I encourage listeners to check out her website. She has some great articles. There's one article in particular I almost want to put in the show notes, it's so good about reading to children. So, please look that up. Take the time. It's well worth it. Thank you. Anything else you want to add?

Deb: Parents, I applaud you. God knows your heart of wanting to do the best thing for your children. And He also knows your limits. He's cheering you on, and so am I.

Terrie: Amen!

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 the show notes for links to Deb's website, lessons plans, and much more. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of the podcast and my blog. My website is terriehellardbrown.com

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, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

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