I did not expect my first Christian children’s book to make the news. Coloring books rarely do. Yet the press release announcing it has now appeared on more than 600 news channels, and I want to say thank you to the people who made that happen.
Credit where it is due
The press release was written by Atticus Publishing. I did not write it, and I want to be clear about that, because the skill in it is theirs. They took a small book with a simple purpose and explained it in a way that newsrooms found worth carrying. That is not an easy thing to do. I have written more than 200 books, and I know good writing when I see it. Theirs is good writing.
Their skillful work and their dedication have been instrumental in sharing this milestone with a far wider audience than I could have reached on my own, and I am deeply grateful for the partnership.
What the release said
The headline those outlets carried invited families to rediscover the wonder of God’s creation. That is exactly what I hoped the book would do. Grandpa Noah’s Backyard is a coloring book, meant to be enjoyed with crayons at the kitchen table. But it is also an invitation. A child who colors a page is paying close attention to something God made, and attention is where wonder begins.
Children ask where the world came from long before anyone teaches them to. If the only answers they hear treat creation as an accident, they will grow up assuming it was one. A coloring book cannot settle that question. It can, however, plant a different assumption: that what they see was made, and made well.
Grandparents understand this better than anyone. They have watched a child notice a beetle or a bird for the first time and have seen the whole world stop for it. A book that gives a grandparent and a grandchild a reason to sit down together, look closely, and talk about who made what they are looking at is doing more than keeping small hands busy. It is starting a conversation that can last a lifetime.
I have spent most of my writing life on books for adults: courtroom novels, apologetics, an encyclopedia of creation. Writing for children is a different discipline. You cannot hide behind complexity. You have to say the true thing simply and trust that a small reader will see it. I am glad the first attempt has found its way into so many headlines.
Why this matters
I do not share this to boast about a number. Six hundred news channels mean nothing if no family picks up a crayon. I share it because it tells me there is still an appetite, in the news and in the home, for the idea that creation is wonderful and that children should be taught to see it that way. That encourages me more than any statistic could.
To Atticus Publishing, thank you. To the outlets that carried the release, thank you. And to every parent and grandparent who sits down with a child and a box of crayons to look at the world God made, thank you most of all. Grandpa Noah’s Backyard is available on Amazon and at major bookstores.
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