Review: What Every Child Should Know About Prayer

We continue with our blog’s “wee-kids Wednesdays” and this week’s review of children’s book is a Christian book on prayer that kids and parents would appreciate!

Nancy Guthrie. What Every Child Should Know About Prayer.  Leyland, UK: 10Publishing, August 6th 2018.  144 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

This was a helpful book on prayer written by the author Nancy Guthrie.  According to the product information online the audience of the book is intended for kids ages 3-7.  For younger kids that means their parents will have to read it to them while older kids can also read this book by themselves.  I read this to my daughters as bed time reading and they enjoyed it.  In addition as a pastor who is concern for biblical contents of Christian books I thought this book’s theology was doctrinally sound.

The book consists of six parts and each part has several “chapters.”  By “chapters” I mean two pages section that also consists of pictures within those pages.  I love taken together these sections presents us a bite size theology of prayer for little ones to understand.  Part one is on “God Wants Us to Talk to Him” that is foundational for later parts of the book with its chapters on prayer is talking to God and God hears us when we pray, etc.  Part two is titled “Prayer is more than Asking God for Things.”  I’m glad this is in the book as prayer is more than requests and petitions, there is praise, thanksgiving, and confession.  Part three is on “God’s People have always Prayed” and it surveys various individuals in biblical history who have prayed different prayers to God.  I thought this was like a min-biblical-theology of prayers for kids!  Part four then is on “The Psalms Gives us Words to Pray” followed by part five on “Jesus Teaches us to Pray.”  Here these two parts focus on the Word of God in the Psalms and Jesus’ teaching on what to pray.  Finally part six is titled “Let’s Pray” and each chapter begins with “Let’s pray for…” with things such as “Let’s pray for God to bless other people, etc.”

I enjoyed the format of this book.  Each part of the book is color coded and my daughters would make the observation that part one is the “gold part,” or that we finished the “green” part and we are not in the blue part, etc.  For the chapters there is the title such as “We can Pray Anywhere” or “We can Pray about Everything” that is stated with the color background of the part of the book it is in, and there’s the main body consisting of one or two paragraphs then a Bible verse and a model prayer.  For the final part of the book that is more driving the readers to pray there is also a “question” bubble that is helpful for the kids to think what and who to pray for.

In addition to the contents my family and I also enjoyed the art work.  They are simple and cute yet realistic and clear.  Having read some children’s book in which the illustrations are abstract or weird I must say I appreciate the artwork in this book being the way it is.

Overall I recommend this book.  I think one can also use this for family devotions and I had my daughters read aloud with me the Bible verse for each “chapter.”  It is edifying and fun to read.