Why Write Church History for Kids?

Audio Transcript

Parents ask me, ‘What was the idea behind biographies for toddlers?’

It’s a different concept, and there aren’t many out there — but there are dozens of little people in my family. One day a brother-in-law commented, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing to have something for small kids that introduced them to church history; something about Whitefield that a toddler could connect with?’

Adults know that church history is informative and instructive, but we can miss how fascinating and fun it is, and that’s what I hope children pick up from these books. God’s people have incredible stories and we can enjoy them with really young children. One of the things I love about the illustrations is the accurate detail that Blair Baille has put into them. If you google ‘Lloyd-Jones meeting Queen Elizabeth’ you can see the photograph faithfully rendered in the board book in a fun, accessible way. The Spurgeon’s home, Katharina Luther’s house — they’re real, and children reading these books will grow up able to recognize not only the names and the faces but also the landmarks and the eras in church history because of the illustrations here.

My hope is that families will enjoy reading these together so that we have a generation growing up who never knew a time when they were unaware of the cloud of witnesses that God has put around them.

— Rebecca VanDoodewaard, author of the Banner Board Book Series.