When I taught preschool, one of my favorite in-class activities was always storytime. Kids can be a tough audience, but they let us know their true opinion. Some books didn’t keep their attention, while others confused them. The best reading days were when I pulled out a book we had read weeks earlier and one of the kids gasped: “I love that book!”
I loved those books, too.
As adults, we usually don’t put too many picture books on our reading lists, and we certainly aren’t the target age demographic. But there are some classics in the kids’ section of the bookstore, and I think we might be missing out when we write them off because of their suggested reading level.
Too old for fairytales? And picture books?
When he published his first book in the Narnia series, C.S. Lewis famously penned a note to the young girl mentioned in the dedication. “I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books,” he wrote. “As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it.”
We still love Narnia. The movies brought in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, and readers of many different convictions and beliefs are relatively familiar with the story of the world in a wardrobe. Lewis intended the stories of Narnia for children, but he also insisted that there would be much in its pages for those who would be willing to look. I think his little note was meant to remind us that even if think we’re too old for Narnia, we really aren’t.
Perhaps the same is true for picture books.
For sure, there is much less material in a picture book than in a middle-grade novel like Lewis’ Narnia series. But there is still something there—maybe more than we think.
What pictures books can teach us
“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself,” Albert Einstein once quipped. It would seem that some seminaries are taking this advice to heart as they begin recommending The Jesus Storybook Bible as part of their curriculum. While seminary students should spend the majority of their time with more advanced material and with the Bible itself, I love that they are realizing that they can gain something from reading a Bible storybook designed for children.
In stories for children, truth is condensed and simplified. But in the best stories, it is never watered down. Kids can often grasp deep thoughts easier than we do—and always better than we expect.
For example, in Max Lucado’s You Are Special, the wooden Wemmick Punchinello worries that he’s not good enough because all the other Wemmicks tell him he isn’t. As the Wemmicks go about giving each other the customary stars (for impressive Wemmicks) and dots (for inferior Wemmicks), we sympathize with poor Punchinello, who only receives dots. Never stars. While the story is oversimplified and not exhaustive, every child or adult who struggles with people-pleasing tendencies or fear of man will take heart from the Maker’s parting thought to Punchinello: “The more you trust my love, the less you care about their stickers.”
Children’s picture books can remind us of the power of stories to help us adjust to huge life changes (like a new baby sibling) or face big fears (like monsters under the bed). They remind us we are not alone—we have never been alone. The way we approach our problems now was hugely shaped by how we learned to deal with change and fear as a child.
Picture books give us a window into the world we have forgotten, where every day is full of surprises and a walk to the mailbox rich with discoveries. We talk about childlike wonder, but ours is often crowded out by the to-do list and the calendar and the emails we need to answer. Picture books show us the world as children often see it—full of adventures, treasure, and friends we haven’t met yet.
Of course, not every picture book is a treasure. Some are great for kids but not so much for adults. Some are great for adults but not so much for kids. And some, honestly, are not really great for any of us.
But the best ones? We never outgrow them.
May we be humble enough to learn
“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret,” C.S. Lewis wrote. “Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
A friend of Corrie ten Boom’s once remarked she had been surprised at Corrie’s willingness to learn from anyone. After all, this was the woman who had experienced and survived unimaginable loss. Her story has so much to teach us, and yet she had the humility to learn from others who seemed to have much less to offer? “She was willing to learn from old and young, rich and poor, intellectual and uneducated,” the friend wrote in a foreword to one of Corrie’s later books.
If we bring that same humility to the picture book section, we may be surprised at the truth and encouragement we find.
Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash
