God is big business in the children's book industry where the first commandment is: "thou shalt publish books which sell." The market has found a solid target audience in boomer parents who are notorious for worrying about their children's lack of knowledge in an age when information is the major deity. Given these influences, religious books flourish, and make choosing hell. Parents wanting direction should look first to their children, matching books to questions and cognitive levels. Out of the mouths of babes will come the clues that lead parents to discovering heavenly books.
Recently a minister accurately described most relgious books for the young as "Hallmark books". These sweetly wrapped packages about the God adults think children should know are often based on a flawed premise. Young children who aren't ready for abstract reasoning aren't ready for the biggest abstract of all. The ages of four to nine are the most important years for parents to listen to their childrens' wonderings and examine these as indicators of developmental levels. Many times spontaneous conversation, directly linked to a query, may be better a better avenue to discussion than a book.
Young children don't want God explained. They want the comfort and the security of knowing they are loved, and that all is right with their world. Maria Shriver's What's Heaven? (Golden Books, $15.00; ages 5-8), the book I presumed would be most suspect is instead, the most successful new children's book I discovered for young children. Many celebrities have been invited into the marketplace to increase sales, but few understand the genre and children. Shriver is an exception to the rule. Her book was written in response to questions her daughter voiced at the time of Rose Kennedy's death. It captures a very natural dialogue between a confused child and a loving mother, who is sensitively fielding questions about a difficult subject. This book has language and a format children can understand because it is concrete and directly relates to the situation in which the parent and child find themselves. The result is a series of genuine questions and answers that will help parents explain Heaven, the difference between soul and body, and the many feelings and events that funerals stimulate.
Children clearly take the lead in The 11th Commandment: Wisdom from Our Children by The Children of America (Jewish Lights Publishing, $16.96; ages 6 - 9). When children from many faiths and backgrounds were asked: "If there were an Eleventh Commandment,what would it be?" they offered simple and powerful wisdoms. The book is divided into sections about living with others, the Earth, family, ourselves, and living with God. Each proverb has the strong, spontaneous words in which children specialize and their drawings add a similar freshness. Some are child-centered viewpoints like "no grabbing". While others are framed in more Biblical lingo like "thou shall keep thy body safe", while there are funny, sweet mixes like: "thou shall keep your body healthy as in thou shall not pig out". All maxims give pause for consideration, room for wondering, and celebrate listening rather than preaching.
Other new books muddy the already complicated dilema of choosing children's religious books. The subtext of many of these suggest children should know and feel chummy with God. This shouldn't be a great surprise in a society where the me-centered adults believe children must be able to relate to everything that comes into their world. In Laurie Knowlton's God Be In My Heart: Poems and Prayers for Children (Boyds Mills Press, $9.95; ages 4-7) , for example, an illustration show a young baseball player and reads: "Dear God Coach me in the way/That I should always play./ Please,/ Let the teams see/ a picture of you in me." To escape sexism, there's a girl version in a dancing prayer. There are those for common experiences like a birthday, and even the more specialized one for children whose parents who fight.
Political correctness makes for even more choice complication, as books recast God in images adults think appropriate. Florence Mary Fitch's A Book About God (Lothrop, $16.00; ages 4-8), embraces diversity. Fitch may be great at teaching comparative religion at Oberlin, but her book does not take into account children's intellectual development. She describes God in a string of complicated similes based on a child's world. "The sky is like God.../Bright by day with the light of the sun,/Restful and friendly at night/ with moon and stars," she writes. Her God is secular, drawn from the popular concept that we are all one. The illustrator makes sure there is a proper racial and gender balance in the pictures. Could this ploy come from publishers who think first about the almighty dollar and worry that a sect-non-specific God will make for more sales?
We want to empower children and let them know they can save the world. This message is preached too clearly in John Burningham's Whaddaya Mean (Crown, $18.95; ages 4-8). When God wakes after "a very long time" and visits the planet, he consults two children about its sorry state. Upset about air and water pollution, God commands the two to "tell the grownups to change the way they are living". When the children approach the adults, they're first seen as snotty little brats. But after declaring, they've come from God, attitudes change magically and instantaneously and controlling adults agree to change their plans and make a better world. It's pretty. It's easy. And it's for adults. After all they're the ones who need the message and won't be confused by the inaccurate perspective.
I've spent a good part of this year coaching and learning from a woman who spent time teaching Sunday school to a group of unruly fourth graders. After long and wonderful theoretical dialogues about religion and children, she and and I devised a plan. I recommended a book based on her intended lesson, she shared it, initiated conversation, read the Bible verses, and teased out the connection between the two stories. Experience showed us that children from the ages of nine to eleven begin to wonder about God, but they lack the sophistication to handle deeper questions, and are so literal that they get easily mired in details, especially those that aren't a part of their own experience.
We began our collaboration around the holidays. She studied the story of the Good Samaritan and thought the most accessible lesson for this age group was helping others. I suggested Janice Cohn's 1995 The Christmas Menorah: How a Town Fought Hate (Whitman, $16.96) which is based on a true event that occured in a community that stood up against bigotry and an act of violence expressed towards a Jewish family. The children were fascinated, moved, and easily connected modern story, and later, the Biblical parable.
Patricia and Frederick McKissack's Let My People Go: Bible Stories Told By A Freeman of Color (Atheneum, $20.00; ages 9 and up) is perfect for this age group. The couple was inspired by memories of a masterful Sunday school storyteller "who mesmerized us with narrations about ancient Biblical characters and African American characters simultaneously". Powerful illustrations by James Ransome, effected by early memories of stories told by his grandmother, are just as thoughtful in concept. Children in upper elementary school know much about slavery and will be easily drawn into these Biblical accounts delivered by the heroine. Charlotte Jefferies is a fictional female abolitionist writer who remembers the Bible stories her father told to explain her world. The stories are written in a format which is a perfect match for children who seek connection, and the authors don't dilute God by remaking Him in a more secular guise. They just tell the old stories and give children room to unlock truths the world has always held dear.
In adolescence, the developmental stage of seeking and the maturity to ask important questions meet. This is a time when many youths study for conformation or bar(bat) mitzvah.
Solid answers come from two men who call themselves 'The God Squad". Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman appear on television, and travel the world together, fielding the important questions young adults ask. Their newest collaboration, Lost and Found: A Kid's Book For Living Through Loss (Morrow, $15.00; ages 8-12) covers everything you can imagine on the subject. They begin mildly with losing "stuff" and move to more intense issues of losing limbs, friends, trust, and more. Like their first book, How Do You Spell God? Answers to the Big Questions from Around the World (Morrow, $15.00; ages 10 and up), it is conversationally written, and balance humor, common sense, and spiritual comfort.
In adolescence children move beyond the concrete. They consider and weigh beliefs, and contemplate other ways of thinking. I learned this lesson the hard way when I shared Julius Lester's What a Truly Cool World (Scholastic, $15.95; ages 8 and up) with a fifth grade class in a religious school. These children were too young to appreciate this sassy creation story where Heaven's speech resembles street talk, angels are predominantly black, God is married, and one angel challenges God constantly. Lester took the standard concepts about the Heaven my students knew, and turned them upside down.
The children's first reception was silent and scary. After they caught their collective intellectual breaths, the kids went ballistic. They didn't see the humor, found the book blasphemous, and were furious with the author. I explained the integrity of the author, the black storytelling tradition, and finally resorted to sending their e-mail questions to Lester. Only when he answered the specific questions they asked, putting the book in their sphere of interest and understanding, could they be partially swayed from their righteous indignation. I suspect the book would have led to fascinating discussions and observations in a middle school classroom. I came away from the experience a wiser woman with a commandment I shall follow in the future: "Always honor age-appropriateness in books about God."