Peter Spier’s solution in this book is to do away with the text almost entirely - he includes his own translation of a 17th-century Dutch poem about Noah’s ark on the first page, but other than that there’s just a few words framing the beginning and end of the book. This is one of our favorites (it was one of mine when I was little, too). These we read over and over again together, and go into Pippo’s Mass bag to read quietly on his own during church.
We have found a few that we do really like, that manage to present what is after all incredibly substantial material (we’re talking salvation history here, folks) in a way that a toddler can grasp but still wonder at. The pictures and the way the book looks are so important! Though often the silly illustrations go hand-in-hand with dumbed-down text, I wouldn’t waste library space on a book that had lovely text but lame pictures. Maybe not right away, but eventually, they will reject beautiful ideas as, well, silly.
If it looks like a silly cartoon, then children are going to assume that it’s not important, even if the words are beautiful. It’s easy to find cartoonish or sugary board books, but instead of presenting something deep in a simple way, these tend to turn it into something silly, lame, or boring. There aren’t too many good religious picture books for very young children - the pre-reading crowd, especially. And Pippo and I are thinking about picture books quite a bit these days! What we can handle (maybe) is telling you about good books in whatever order we think of them. The fact that this is the first entry in our Library Project just goes to show you that we’re serious when we say we’re not going to go about this in a rational way. Filed Under: Picture Books, Religious Books for Children
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