Children's Books and the Importance of Story

We read to our kids a lot. I think most parents do. But it's interesting how we don't always think as much about how we choose the stories we read them.

I've made a conscious decision to try to choose the books i read our kids more deliberately. I try to choose stories that will capture their imagination, stretch their little minds, and at the same time, inform their understanding of the world we live in.

Recently, we've been reading some of John White's "Archives of Anthropos" series. We just finished the first book, The Sword Bearer, and are just beginning the second, Gaal the Conqueror. Narnia fans will no doubt view them as something of a conceptual knockoff, but John White is much more explicit in his christian theology than Lewis. Many who have tried to give uch serious thought to the Christ-type Aslan will be puzzled over the lack of an attonement for Narnians, for example. The Stone Table and the buying back of Edmund is clearly Lewis at his most explicitly Christian, but in other areas, such as most of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lewis doesn't seem to have much of an agenda.

Still it's been fun to watch the children try to draw parallels between the Goblin Prince, Nicholas Slapfoot, of Anthropos, with the Lord of the Nine in the Fellowship of the Ring, with the evil mind "IT" in "A Wrinkle in Time."

I'll keep you posted.