Quality children's literature

We're in the midst of writing a series called The Bible 'n' Books. Our intent is to use quality children's literature and student art responses to teach favorite portions of scripture. It is going to be a refreshing change from our typical high-energy, multi-media programming. I hope that we can connect kids to the Bible in a fresh way. Perhaps we'll grab some kids who haven't gotten into it previously.


The first challenge was to find quality children's literature. I began my search at a leading online Christian bookstore. Then I went to Amazon. It was difficult to even know which search words to use to pinpoint what I was looking for. After much browsing, I ordered a bunch of books.

While we were awaiting the Amazon order, my colleague and I went to our local Christian bookstore. We were disappointed to find very little quality kids lit. We went on to Borders and Barnes and Noble. Again, we didn't find much. We found the Noah's Ark books by Peter Spiers and Jan Brett - those definitely fit our criteria and were familiar to us as former grade school teachers. But the best find of the day was the Jesus Storybook Bible: Every story whispers his name by Sally Lloyd-Jones. It's newly published and has fantastic kid-friendly, but not-too-babyish language. We loved the way it told the story of the Lord's Prayer.

With that we nailed down our four lessons and themes. Noah's Ark, Psalm 23, The Lord's Prayer, and Jesus A to Z.

Then two days later the package from Amazon arrived. I was delighted to find some fantastic, beautiful books. Now we definitely have options for doing The Bible 'n' Books again next year. Here are some of my favorites:

At Break of Day by Nikki Grimes This is the story of creation showing the conversation that Jesus and God the Father may have had as they worked together to create the world.

To Every Thing there is a Season by Leo Dillon a beautiful book featuring art from cultures around the world illustrating the familiar passage in Ecclesiastes.

Jesus the Word by Mark Botuzzi-Jones covers John 1:1, the Trinity, and the Incarnation in an artful and poetic manner.