Not a big fan of this one. Prayers were not particularly memorable or engaging. I had hoped for a bit more that would make for family engagement periods. ( )

This is a book of simple prayers for children experiencing difficult situations in life. The illustrations are lovely. Adults will love it too. ( )

I've been mulling this one for awhile, and in the end I'm afraid I can't relate to it very well.

I really wanted it to be an excellent paraphrase/"translation" of selected Psalms, but it was not what I expected.

Without scripture references, I would never have thought that this book had any correlation to the Psalms. In addition, I'm afraid that it brings up difficult issues-- which is important to do, for children's growth-- but does not subsequently offer enough.... *something*: information, context, reassurance??... to make me want to intro this volume to my children.

I also wonder (based purely on the names of the author and illustrator, which could be very wrong) whether this poetic work is presented here in translation. If so, that could certainly explain some of the stilted, awkward feeling.

Perhaps I'll return to it in a few years, after my kids have grown some, and see if I feel differently about it. For now, I prefer Elspeth Campbell Murphy's treatment of the Psalms for children.

This is a visually beautiful book, but not at all what I expected. I can't imagine that children would relate to these prayers. The prayers are too specific in situation for the words to feel comfortable in the mouth of someone not in the same situation and yet, the chances of that would be vanishingly remote. ("My pet! He's been found!"; "My friends got mad and now half the class is against me ... tell them I'm right!") This is why when the disciples said "Lord, teach us to pray", Jesus gave us the very generic Our Father.

Although these prayers are purportedly based on people and situations from the Bible, they sound nothing like the pithy and honest prayers Biblical characters actually uttered. A four-prayer sequence in which Grandpa is ill, dies, and is mourned with the stages of grief -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance -- clearly is based on 20th century grief theory of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and not on the Bible at all. Also, it would make any child I know extremely worried about grandpa's mildest ailment!

In reality, these are not exactly prayers that one could pray daily, or pray personally. They are more like little stories or vignettes without a narrative arc. Example: "Well, God, I'm on the bus now... Someone sits down beside me... God, is that because of you? I close my eyes. The voice next to me says..." etc.

I can imagine two or three books with this title that I would like and use with my grandchildren. Either a book of daily prayers for ordinary mundane occasions (waking up, mealtime, blessings for people or pets or places, holidays) or a book of the Bible characters and their real prayers -- although there is a paucity of such outside the Psalms and it might turn into The Psalms For Children. The third possibility would be to flesh out the stories found in the book so they would be about a child character who gets into these situations and prays these prayers. If it didn't have to put the words into the mouth of the young reader, it might be more comfortable for them and give them ideas about how to pray. ( )