The Silent Noisy Night by Jill Roman Lord
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
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.