(Please help me by rating the review at the bottom of this posting! Thanks.)This is a children's book but not merely so. The author and illustrator are providing a tool to help make prayer a natural conversation with God for both the reader and the listener. DeStefano's touching verse and Elliott's stunning illustration provide intimacy and warmth to share with children. However, underneath them are opportunities for the readers to grow in God as well as those to whom they are reading. It is intentional.
This book is about prayer and not just prayer for children. This shows in the illustrator's dedication to this book to "all teachers everywhere, big and small." The small ones can be the teacher here. Also, in Mr. DeStefano's posting on Youtube we grownups get to eavesdrop on the children. Along with the usual marketing stuff, he has posted "Kids Talk About God" found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWkgHHp0kDY . You can also check out an excerpt and some videos by the author at http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/catalog.php?isbn=9780307458049&view=excerpt. This is a great book to leave laying around the educational spaces at church, coffee tables at home or grandmas, and wherever people of all ages pray.
Teaching prayer comes with a depth of gratification that is hard to put into words. Wonderful things happen when the lesson get loose from the words and the techniques. Teaching children comes with a strange irony though. The 'teaching' can ruin what they already know naturally. This book provides a rhythm and not a structure. It provides time and a safe place rather than bullet points. Pay attention as you read. You might just become the learner. I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review as a part of their Blogging for Books program.
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