Breathe

When I heard that Paraclete Press was publishing another book by Laura Alary, I was excited! I loved her previous books Make Room: A Child’s Guide for Lent and Easter and Look! A Child’s Guide to Advent and Christmas. They stand head and shoulders above other children’s books on those topics, combining explanations of the special days of the church with a deep spirituality and connection to the ordinary parts of a child’s life.

Alary’s latest gift to children and those who minister to them is Breathe: A Child’s Guide to Ascension, Pentecost, and the Growing Time. It’s gorgeously illustrated by Cathrin Peterslund with the theme of breathe woven throughout the stories of the Ascension, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time (referred to in the book as the “Growing Time”).

At the Ascension, Jesus promises his friends he will never leave them alone and will send a helper. Rather than simplifying the Bible’s account of the coming of the Spirit, the narrator explains that it is told in two different ways which both start the same and then split in two, like branches of a tree. We are told how the church today celebrates Pentecost and this is followed by the narrator’s personal account of “learning new ways to pray with the wind and my own breath.”

As the Spirit flowed through Jesus’ friends, they said and did the things that Jesus did. The speaker in the story sees the work of the Spirit continuing in their life too, in the growing plants of their garden, the wind at the beach, their creativity, and the sharing of their food with their neighbors and the community food bank. Alary brings the work of the Spirit full circle from Jesus to his friends and to his followers today. Like her other books, this is one which will be enjoyed not just by children but by those of all ages.