This past week I had the chance to put on a Christmas Magic Show for the kids at a local public library! The library was one of my favorite places to visit when I was kid. We went almost every week to check out new books and find old favorites to check out again!
One of the areas I would also search through was magic trick books. I checked out so many of those magic trick books that the librarians knew I was coming to check out another one every time I visited! Because I spent so much time reading those books as a kid, it instilled a love of magic tricks in me as I grew up. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I decided to take my magic tricking to a new level! That wonder of learning a new magic trick from the pages of a book never left me!
In fact, my love of writing stories started with my love of reading stories. I had countless adventures between the pages of so many amazing books! The wonder of stories is such an important feeling to pass on to your kids, grandkids, and everyone else in your life! Support your local library by checking out a book today or requesting they carry the Thrones series for other people to check out and discover a world of fun, adventure, and faith!
When I’m not working on writing, I am a Pastor to Kids at a local church! It’s one of my favorite things I do. One of my roles is to stock our Nursery and Preschool rooms with the best picture books and board books for the leaders to read to the kids!
I recently pulled all the Christmas books in our Nursery and Preschool rooms and made a little video about them all! These are all on my recommends list for sure. Check out what books we stock in our church library below:
And that means I’m perusing my shelves for all the Christmas themed and Christmas-adjacent books! In the video below, I go through all the Christmas books I could find in my personal library. From picture books to middle grade fiction, there’s a little something here for everyone who enjoys a good Christmas tale.
A couple of days ago, my wife and I visited our local used bookstore, and as I was searching the shelves, I gasped out loud at what I found! I actually couldn’t believe the price tag the store had on this, when I know how much it usually goes for online.
We also visited Cheekwood Estate to see their Holiday Lights Event! It was a lot of fun, even if it was a little bit chilly. Check out what we saw and what we found in the video below!
Christmas season is officially here! I know, I know, there are those of us who have been secretly listening to Christmas music for a couple of months now, but for the rest of the world, Thanksgiving has ended and it’s officially Christmastime!
To kick off the Christmas celebrations, we started decorating our house and I received a surprise book in the mail! Join me as we decorate, do a little unboxing, and get into the Christmas mood!
My wife and I decided to head over to a local antique store for some unique vintage Christmas finds! While she was searching for vintage Christmas ornaments, I’m out here searching for vintage Christmas books. Join us as we search a giant antique mall!
As a Children’s Pastor, I am always on the search for good books to add to our Preschool and Nursery areas at church, and so what did I do? I stood at the Walmart Christmas books display reading about twenty Christmas board and picture books in order to find a couple to add to our library. When I first read The Silent Noisy Night by Jill Roman Lord and illustrated by Kelly Breemer, I almost cried. This book is an incredibly beautiful, well-illustrated, amazing story that will not only teach young kids various sounds, but will also point to a foundational theological point: the God of Scripture is a God who celebrates.
This is a board book with amazing illustrations, and simple sentences on each page that allow the story to be read quickly, but also allow kids time to look at the pictures and will allow parents and teachers to point out various corners of the pages to see all the animals. Words that are sounds are all highlighted and in bold to allow for kids learning sight words to begin seeing them and correlating each word to the pronunciation and the sound it makes.
I really appreciate here the attention to depict the people in the story as they would have been, not as European, blond-haired, blue-eyed proxies. This allows kids to see the real kinds of people who may have been there at the birth of Jesus, even if some of the animals here such as raccoons may not be animals in the Middle East.
The ending to the book also has a wonderful message for kids surrounding the ways we celebrate the birth of Jesus. This idea of celebration is so important, as we see celebration on the part of God and God’s people throughout Scripture, but often find ourselves in the United States of America leaning away from celebration in favor of a more stoic and serious God. We see clearly from stories Jesus told such as the stories of lost things in Luke 15 that all heaven rejoices when someone decides to follow Jesus. The most important aspect of this celebration is that it does not end. In the story of the Prodigal Son, the father tells them to start the party for the son who has come home, but he never tells them to end it. The party continues.
In The Silent Noisy Night, kids will discover an incredible world of celebration and how each one of us can use our voices, actions, and songs to celebrate the birth of the Savior.
