From Publishers Weekly
Poet and anthologist Hopkins gathers prayers that celebrate children's relationships with God in this joyous collection. Noted poets and authors?including Myra Cohn Livingston, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Wise Brown and Madeleine L'Engle?offer tender expressions of love and thanks. In addition, many traditional prayers (e.g., "All Things Bright and Beautiful") and anonymous compositions (e.g., "God made the world so broad and grand/ Filled with blessing from His hand./ He made the sky so high and blue,/ And all the little children, too") will strike a familiar chord with young readers and their parents. Schaffer's bright, creamy oil paintings match the upbeat mood of the text. The simple language of the prayers and their focus on the universal emotions of childhood make them just right for sharing and memorizing. Ages 3-10.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 2?In this well-chosen collection of 22 short prayers, some are familiar and some are fresh, but all are both moving and easy to understand. God's wonderful creativity in nature is the central theme, but friendship, gardening, and worship are included as well. Two selections have a specific Christian orientation, but the rest are suitable for any monotheistic faith. In addition to traditional prayers, there are poems by Robert Browning, Nikki Grimes, Myra Cohn Livingston, and Lois Duncan, among others. In a departure from the pretty, delicate illustrations often associated with children's prayer books, the full-page pictures, done in oil on canvas, are bold and bright and feature active children of various ethnic groups.?Patricia Pearl Dole, formerly at First Presbyterian School, Martinsville, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ages 4^-8. Unattributed traditional prayers as well as ones from such unexpected sources as Margaret Wise Brown, Lois Duncan, and Carl Sandburg make up this warm and celebratory collection. The 22 prayers, which portray God's creation and his loving relationships with people, contain imagery of friendships, animals, and nature. Schaffer's vibrant oil paintings use a butterfly motif, a visual metaphor suggesting that life is transformed by communing with God. This theme is expanded in passages taken from such works as Browning's Pippa Passes ("God's in His Heaven--/ All's right with the world") and in the childlike charm of such lines as "Sometimes I pray tiny, / or sometimes a lot, / Depending on whether / I'm sleepy or not," found in the poem "Prayer Time," by Barbara M. Hale. A lovely, gentle devotional. Shelley Townsend-Hudson
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