Childhood Influences: The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes

The entry below was written by my cyber-friend Ted Gossard who has a blog called Jesus Community at www.communityofjesus.blogspot.com.

Mom read us books as little children and the one she read the most and that I remember most vividly is Kenneth Taylor's The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes. The pictures stood out to me and for me as a child were surely iconic, as the simplicity, clarity and power of the spoken word came through clearly for a child in Kenneth Taylor's (the author of the paraphrase Living Bible) words, with simple questions at the end of each short entry.

This book surely was the most formidable of all books for me as a child in influencing and shaping my thought and formation, the fruit of it coming forth in my conversion years later. But before my conversion I rarely if ever doubted the truth of the simple gospel, or of the Bible. It's only now, as I look back on it, that I begin to understand just a little the profound impact this book, and my mother's faithful reading of it to us, had on me.

The picture of Jesus hanging on the cross always stood out to me. Also the first picture of the book of God creating the heavens and the earth, along with a good many others. Each picture was quite important to us, and the words were kept simple and few, with good questions afterwards, just right for a child.

I have many good childhood memories, but this ranks among the best. My guess is that Mom often read several at a time. I can't remember exacly how I felt during such times, but I'm sure it was formational for me and to this day has an impact on what I do in more ways than I can understand. I think what it did tell me is that the Bible is both true and true to life. So that I carried that belief with me, even through my years of rebellion.

There are surely better books out there for children now in expressing the truth of God's word and God's kingdom come in Jesus. But surely there's no better book as to the format that was used and captured me a a child, preparing me for a love for God's word and the story in it, which continues on to this day.

Dorothy Day: Childhood Influences

Late in life, Dorothy Day, the Roman Catholic social activist, ruminated on the powerful influence of some of the books she read as a child. If we want evidence that childhood books have a profound bearing on who we become, Day is exhibit A.

Day writes about being influenced by Queechy and Wide, Wide World, two novels by Susan Bogert Warner (aka Elizabeth Wetherell) written around 1850. I have not read these novels, but http://merrigold.livejournal.com/1342.html offers the following description of Queechy:

"Like her wildly popular first novel, "The Wide Wide World", "Queechy" focuses on the development of a female character from childhood to marriage. Fleda is by nature a girl "of velvet softness; of delicate, downcast beauty; of flitting but abundant smiles, and of even too many and ready tears". It is religion that enables this soft and delicate character to exert all her strength and face adversity, achieving "patient continuance in well-doing". When those around her are found incapable of providing moral, emotional, or practical support, it is Fleda who finds unknown physical and emotional strength. When all others fail you, says Warner, rely on the promises of God, and persevere.

Fleda's experience is in some part, Susan Warner's. In 1834 Susan and Anna Warner moved to Constitution Island with their father, Henry Warner. They intended to live on the island only during the summer but reverses in Henry Warner's fortune forced them to sell their home in New York City. Even after their writing became popular, the sisters continued to live on the island, doing their own gardening and cooking, sometimes spending winters on the mainland at friends' houses. The sisters promoted the somewhat radical idea that young ladies could actually do their own physical work such as gardening -- Fleda finds pleasure in her garden as well as hard work. The Warner sisters were also known for their deep commitment to religious teachings. The beauty of the natural world, and religion, are beloved by Fleda in "Queechy".

The above is almost a blueprint of Day's life: She became a convert to Christianity (in her case, Roman Catholicism), went to live among the poor and strove every day to be patient and help build a world where it was "easier for people to be good." Like Fleda, she was the pillar of strength in her community. She relied on God. She persevered. As in the real life story of the Warners, Day bought a house on an island--Staten Island--and traveled between it and New York City (and other places). Like Fleda, Day embraced physical labor and found it nurtured the soul. She loved the beauty of the natural world and religion.

Day also read Sinclair Lewis's The Jungle with fascination as a child at a time her family was living in Chicago, and as result of the book, would roam the poorer neighborhoods of South Chicago. The poverty did not repel her. In fact, she was drawn to smells: baking bread and garlic, flowers. This prepared her for living among the poor in the lower East side of New York.

In Day's early reading, we find stunning support for the theory that childhood reading helps form who we become as adults.

I have two questions: what books from childhood can you look back at and see that, unwittingly, had a disproportionate influence on the rest of your life? In what ways? Second, if the early books we read have a disproportionate impact on the "tabula rasa" of young minds, should we be concerned about what's out there? Or can we trust that the influence of the less substantial books will fade away?

Childhood influences: Amazons and Swallows

I am starting a series called Childhood Influences, about the lifelong influence of the books or stories we read as children. This opening piece is a slightly different take on the subject from my friend Alice Tracy, whose recent experience of reading of a children's book brought back memories of what it felt like to read a book as a child--and a reminder of what values she took away from childhood readings.

If you would like to contribute a guest blog or thoughts on childhood influences, please e-mail it to me at direynolds@earthlink.net


I first read Arthur Ransome’s Amazons and Swallows two years ago, many moons past childhood. Yet it has continued to resonate with me. The story is familiar in its outlines: a small group of siblings sail off together to camp out alone on a nearby island. An enemy is sighted: a lone man living on a sailboat with a parrot. Surely he’s a pirate! Then clear evidence of another boat encroaching on their island. The crew of the other boat is two sisters – tomboys -- of roughly the same age as the children on the island. A battle ensues but the children end friends. More adventures await, including a real battle with thieves, and a pleasant ending when the man with the parrot proves to be someone’s prickly but good-hearted uncle. All of the elements of a great story. If you haven’t read it, first, allow me to recommend that you do so. Second, let me say that I had the same feelings reading that book at around the half-century mark that I dare say I would have had when I was 12. And you may ask, “What were those feelings?”

I was captured almost immediately by the British nature of the book. Many of the children’s books that have stuck with me (although by no means all) have had that British nature. I mean by that term an independence of spirit, an isolation of the child’s world from that of the parent’s, and a pragmatic outlook that says, “Just get the job done.” I like to think that I am an independent, pragmatic individual, one always up for an adventure (no matter how small, and many of mine have been pretty small) so this British nature resonates with me.

Perhaps I am wrong to assign a “Britishness” to my reading experiences because many American books showcase those traits: Freddy the Pig, Caddie Woodlawn, The Saturdays, all come to mind. It’s just that the British have castles and hidden passageways to islands and sailing boats and all manner of adventurous settings to show off their adventurous spirit. Freddy and Caddie have the farm and the children in The Saturdays have New York City in the 1940s when adventure means finding a lost dog and having a mounted police officer bring you home. It’s not quite the same.

Another commonality though is the readiness of the authors to allow the girls to be as adventurous and as self-reliant as the boys. While there are some nods to femininity, all of the girls in these books seek out action and are largely unafraid of risk. (Of course, for the Freddy books and their almost all-animal cast you have to substitute female animals for female children. Still, in Freddy and the Perilous Adventure, Alice the duck – no relation – is the first to jump from the hot air balloon.) The crew of the Amazon is all female and it is one of the girls from the crew of the Swallow who thwarts the thieves – hiding in the boat in the dark by herself.

While when I was younger I would never have thought consciously about gender stereotyping, I longed for adventure as a child. I wanted to explore what life was like in far away worlds, but more importantly – I wanted to explore what life would be like on my own. If you can take that imaginative leap – and have the reading skills to do so – you can live in another world. I think that is why Amazons and Swallows made such an impression on me – it allowed me to immerse myself in a childhood adventure once again. I hope that I did learn from my childhood reading a lifelong desire for adventure, a willingness to take chances, and the imaginative ability to place myself in another world. I learned a great deal from the books I read as a child, but these may be the most important lessons.