Using Children’s Books to Talk about Faith

It’s Children’s Book Week here in Australia. A few years ago I wrote about some of the books that my children enjoyed. In this post I’m going to focus on using picture books to talk about faith and life. Picture books often have great life lessons in them or things that children can learn about.

This years book week theme is “Curious Creatures, Wild Minds”. I believe that God created us to be curious creatures with wild minds and you’ll also find many curious creatures in picture books that can fuel our wild minds or our imagination.

Picture books speak to all ages. I still have many favourite picture books from my childhood, my children’s childhood and ones that I’ve read to different kids over the years.

Why Use Children’s Books to talk about faith?

• Everyone loves a story.
• It can be a way of talking about harder topics.
• Connects with what people know.
• Reading stories is often a part of the daily ritual, so it’s about adding a faith element to what you’re already doing.
• Consider biographies as well not just non-fiction. Particularly useful for looking at gifts and talents and the unique gifts we’ve all been given or how God made each of us for a purpose.

How to Use Picture Books to Talk about Faith?

Simply read the story and ask some wondering questions, similar to those used in Godly Play. Questions such as:

• “I wonder which part of the story is the most important part?”
• “I wonder if there is any part of the story we could leave out and still have all we need?”
• “I wonder where you see yourself in the story?”
• “I wonder what this teaches us about life or God?”
• “I wonder which character is like Jesus?”

An Individual Reflection idea for adults – based on part of a practice from The Gift of Wonder: Creative Practices for Delighting in God by Christine Aroney-Sine. Find a copy of one your favourite children’s books from home or borrow from the library. Sit in a quiet place and imagine you are five years old again sitting on a loved ones knee. Read through the story aloud. Examine the illustrations as a child would. Watch for your inner response. Write down anything you sense God is saying to you.

Finding books that can work with a particular faith theme:

• Picture Book Theology
• Story Path: Lectionary Links
• 15 Picture Books that Nurture Your Child’s Spirituality
• Picture Books, The Way of Love, & Becoming Beloved Community

Using Children’s Books in Events/programs

Bag it up outreach – Child, family or all age session based on a Biblical theme and then children go home with a book to match the theme.  Different choices – one for younger children, one for primary school age & one for high school age eg graphic novel, along with discussion questions for the family and prayer ideas.

Bedtime stories and prayers – Stand-alone session or part of another social event/program.  In person or online (be aware of copyright & not sharing recordings publicly, though some publishers have more relaxed permissions because of COVID.)

Read aloud time – before or after Sunday School or worship or other church event. May be not every week but once a month or a few times a term, to keep interest.

Bi-monthly Book Swap – Bring in a book with your name in it. Put a favourite meal time prayer into the book. Swap with another family and use for the month or two.

Reading group or Book Club – for ages 6-12. Reading a book and lining it up with scripture or what the current theme is.

Parenting sessions or workshops – a number of books also speak to adults and can be used in mother’s groups or parenting workshops. I often read Love You Forever by Robert Munsch when I’m speaking on the topic of Raising Great Kids or The Five Love Languages (fits with words of affirmation).

Using children’s books in worship

The obvious place to use a children’s book is during the children’s message. The adults normally enjoy this as much as the kids.

If you’re doing worship on a particular theme you can use a children’s book to explore the theme or as part of the message. Worship is for Everyone: Ideas for worship including ‘story books’ as a way of exploring faith at all ages by Julie Pinazza has service plans for a number of themes and books to read, plus ideas of books to use with other themes. We’ve used Wilfred Gordon MacDonald Partridge in a Back to School Service with the theme “Learning is for All”.

Lent/Easter

A Family Story for Easter – Amon’s Adventure – A book to read slowly during Lent and leads up to Easter Sunday.

Advent/Christmas

A book a day for advent – Read a book a day during advent. Plenty of ideas for how to do this, as well as books that you could use.

Add some story reading to your advent calendar – Our advent calendar has symbols to go with a Bible story for each day but one day has a treasure chest and we read a story – often With Love at Christmas by Mem Fox.

Family Stories for Advent – A series of 4 books by Aarnold Ytreeide that are set in the time leading up to the birth of Jesus. Read a chapter each night during Advent. We used these books from when our youngest was 4 until our oldest was 18.

A Christmas eve story tradition – The tradition in our house been to read The Night Before Christmas and An Aussie Night Before Christmas, after the stockings were put out. More recently a third book, Twas the Evening Of Christmas has been added to the tradition. Twas the Evening of Christmas is based on the Biblical account.

How do use children’s books to talk about faith and life?

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