I'm joined on today's podcast by Editor Todd Hains and Illustrator Natasha Kennedy. Together, they have been working on Lexham's new series of children's books, known as the FatCat series. We discuss the current state of Christian children's literature, Catechism, and Classical Education, and how we can be intentional about teaching our children the language and the theology of our faith.
I'm joined on today's podcast by Editor Todd Hains and Illustrator Natasha Kennedy. Together, they have been working on Lexham's new series of children's books, known as the FatCat series. We discuss the current state of Christian children's literature, Catechism, and Classical Education, and how we can be intentional about teaching our children the language and the theology of our faith.
You're listening to episode 216 of the Pastor Writer podcast conversations on reading, writing and the Christian life. I'm your host, chase Rep, local. I'm excited to have a couple of guests on the podcast today to talk about a series of children's books that they've been producing at Lexham. We get to talk to the editor of the project as well as the illustrator, and if you've been listening to the show or keeping up with some of the other work that I've been doing, it's an area I'm really interested in. I'm thinking a lot, probably because I have my own kids and kids in the congregation. I, pastor. How do we actually hand on this faith? How do we help educate our children in the faith that we have? And I think we need all the help we can get to do that. We need lots of resources, lots of great books, and so we talked in today's episode about this new series of books, how they could be a help to that, but in a broader way, about classical education, about catechism, about how to train our children in the faith that we possess. Hope you enjoy this conversation. I know I got a lot out of it.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm joined on the podcast today by two guests. It's a privilege to be able to have two guests joining us. Usually these are one-on-one, so it should be an even fuller conversation. Today. My guests are Todd Haynes and Natasha Kennedy. Todd Haynes is an editor at Lexham Press. He and his wife Veronica have two children and two great cats. This cat theme is going to become important and thematic, as you're going to notice in a moment, and I'm also joined by Natasha Kennedy. She's a freelance illustrator, a homeschooling mom in Seattle, and she and her husband Lindsay have four children and, as her bio says, also a great cat, which we have three cats.
Speaker 1:They're not in with me right now, but we have a great cat as well, so put me in the club they joined me today to talk about a special series of books that are out with Lexham, entitled the Fat Cat Children's Books Series, which I've gotten to look at and have really, really enjoyed with my kids. So, natasha and Todd, really an honor or privilege to have you on the podcast. Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3:It's fun to be here, and it's cool to hear about these books being in other people's homes too. Yes, well, I know you guys have been working hard on them.
Speaker 1:Maybe for a little context, I'd love to hear Todd tell me a little bit about your work at Lexham and then after that, natasha, maybe we can talk about your work as an illustrator. I know you're doing some writing also.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, so I am the associate publisher of acquisitions and development. We're a small team at Lexham and I do all. I do lots of editorial things too, so that's where this series was something that I'd wanted to do for a long time. I'm responsible particularly for faster stuff and theology stuff.
Speaker 3:I'm a historical theologian by training, but one of the things that I during my doctoral work I worked on the Reformation commentary on scripture with IVP Academic and what I was very struck by is these labs in the Reformation time and before they spent a ton of time with the Bible, but to be credentialed was really a matter of sort of open disputation and argument. And there's two levels going on there where people are, you know, interacting with big, heady ideas and doing great rhetoric, but then when you see them step into the pulp but they're doing something very different. They're delivering that content in an incredibly different fashion. So somebody like Martin Luther. Martin Luther is probably the finest scholastic of the Reformation in a lot of ways Really clever, sharp distinctions to you know, he's learning this stuff from a young age where I find it's pretty difficult to keep up with what all he's saying when you look at these and then he stands in the pulpit and he's delivering sermons for illiterate people and for children, and he is saying these same deep theological truths, but delivering them in a way that's immediately accessible, you know. So one of my favorite examples is he says well, where do you find these promises from God? Well, look at that man on the cross. That's the God that created the world. And he'll do these very provocative, simple statements like that. That contains a whole book within it, and anyway.
Speaker 3:So during my doctoral studies, I was sort of obsessed with this idea that, you know, if we really want to serve the church with folks with doctorates in theology, this service really should look different. We do these technical trainings in school, but when we go out into the church, we should really be approaching this from a very different perspective. We're not trying to establish new stuff. We're not trying to make our name great. We're not even trying to say that we have the answers. You know, like the answers here in these fat cat books you can get them elsewhere. You don't need Tasha or me or Hal Sankbile or Ben Myers that this is public teaching of the church. Anyway, I kind of got on a tear there, didn't I? So back to fat cat.
Speaker 3:The idea of fat cat was we have three generations of uncatacized American Protestants and people feel that the most it seems to me, the most intensely when they begin to have children. You start to see these folks that maybe they've kind of wandered away from church or they've lost their place and now they have kids and they're like oh hey, I guess you know I should do some stuff with this. See, it's a time there are other times in people's lives like this that you see them enter into church, but that's a time that I've noticed and, you see, there's a fear of what am I going to do? You know, thankfully babies are babies. You got a lot of time to figure stuff out, but people are afraid of reading the Bible and they're afraid of answering these basic questions what happens when I die? What does it mean that God died on the cross? All that kind of stuff. Can I even talk that way?
Speaker 3:And so the goal with these books was to give parents and those who care for children words. Here are these basic tools. We're not giving you all the answers, we're giving you the basics so that you the analogy I like to use is one of fishing we're not giving you fish. We're teaching you how to fish. This isn't all the things that you're going to need to talk about with a child, but it is the basic and basic foundation, and so if you start with the Apostles Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, you're going to be able to help your child find their way around in the Bible, find their way around in church service, to reason with difficult questions that they will face. That was the dream of the series, and I should just say I know I need to hand this over to Tasha but the reason that the series is called Fat Cat is, well, because we had these cats that were fat.
Speaker 1:As we all apparently do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but part of it is the catechism is a confusing word and people don't quite know what to do with it. There are three ways that it's used, and the foundational use of catechism means the very words of the Ten Commandments, the very words of the Apostles Creed and the very words of the Lord's Prayer. That is the catechism. There's not really a great way to gloss that or use a different phrase, and so we were trying to think, well, how do we, how do we help that not sound so scary? And Fat Cat became the symbol to talk about catechism, the depth and richness that's in these texts but made it sort of friendly and silly and approachable.
Speaker 1:Well, pliny, we're going to explore. I'm excited to talk about the role of catechism, the series itself, but I think, as often these great kids books are, they're also equally for the parents that are reading them. I found that to be true with these books, so I think you've already captured that these are about conversations for families, not just kids. Natasha, you've been involved in the illustration portion of the series, which are really excellent as well too. I mean, lexham always puts out I think they put out beautiful, well-made books, and that was certainly the series, certainly the case with this series as well too. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about your role as an illustrator, how you got into that work of illustration and then the illustration for the series.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's been a privilege to work with this series. Like you said, lexham puts out very beautiful material, like beauty, you know, outward beauty, but also just some really rich content, and so, yeah, my involvement has been obviously doing all the art for all the books, which has meant working closely with Todd. You know, kind of dreaming up how do we take these really foundational truths and make them accessible to children and, like you said, parents. We kind of have this kind of like dual vision with the art, where we want it to be beautiful and reverent, like we take our faith seriously, we take Jesus seriously, but then like kind of like what Todd was saying, that the gospel is for children and it's simple enough that a child could understand it, and so we want the art to also be kind of connecting with that side of children. The not just the wonder, but also the Jesus looks so friendly that you want to like hold his hand or sit down on his lap and read a book with him. You know, like he's both. He's both wonderful, but he's also extremely accessible. You know you have to be like a child to get in heaven, and so so, yeah, we kind of dreamed up an art style together.
Speaker 2:You know I'm very intensely inspired by Ivan Dural, an old Disney painter. He did the backdrops for the Old Sleeping Beauty movie, which is probably the best one, and so I really love his styles very elegant and beautiful but, you know, accessible for kids. And so we kind of went along that style, kind of bringing in the symbolism of iconography as well. You know, when you look at kind of like Orthodox icons and stuff, they tell so much truth through positioning and colors and so so kind of my vision for the Fat Cat series and really how I do art is I want to be conveying, I want to be teaching simple truths so that a child can be like boom, yes, I understand exactly what's happening on this page, based on where Jesus is standing and the expression he's making and the people around him. What are they doing.
Speaker 2:But then I also like to sneak in symbolism and other biblical truths or other allusions to other scriptures that you know.
Speaker 2:For every one story of Jesus' life you have, there's like tons of like Psalms that are being referenced and there's, you know, old Testament parallel stories that are, you know, a part of it, and so I like to kind of bring in that richness to the art as well. So we'll kind of put in Easter eggs, you know, like if, for example, for one of the spreads you have the road Jesus' friends, that he meets on the road to Emmaus and he sits down and it says, when they broke bread together that they realized who he was. And so there's all this symbolism in that one page of him. Like he's broken the bread and you can, you can see his face between the two broken pieces of bread. And then in the artwork behind him there's these wings kind of coming out from behind, kind of referencing the Ark of the Covenant, you know, and the cherubim around him, and so, yeah, so I like there to be depth for, you know, adults and people who like to go deep into scripture, but also just like a kid could understand it.
Speaker 2:Now, I'm the one kind of waxing about stuff, but yeah, so that's kind of my vision for Fat Cat.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, they definitely are excellent and I noticed right away picking up the book I think you described this well that the illustrations feel new and fresh, but they certainly feel historical at the same time. They feel like they're linked to something symbolic in the way that you've described it. Todd, you said something interesting earlier where you said we've now had several generations that have not gone through the process of catechism. When you look at the resources that are available to parents and families, the literature that's out there for kids in the Christian space, what were you seeing? That sort of made you recognize like some need to do something. It was an opportunity here to meet a need that wasn't being met.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, excuse me, that's a great question In so many ways. We live in a time with just a ton of great children's books. There's some really good series out there and really great storybook bibles. I have opinions about a lot of them, but you know, it's really sort of complaining about wealth the way that it is.
Speaker 3:But the thing that I've seen is a lot of these books are done by American evangelicals who, for all their strengths, don't necessarily have a sense of the great tradition of the Christian faith and what it means to be small C Catholic, this idea that we're all connected throughout time and place with other Christian believers, other saints. And the simplest way that that continuity takes place is through the teaching of the 10 commandments, the Apostles Creed and the Lord's Prayer. That's the old rigid, not rigid, that's just the old structure of how you teach somebody the Christian faith. It goes back super far. It's really prominent in the West in particular. I mean in the East they're not gonna use the Apostles Creed but they're still gonna talk about that baptismal faith, and so that was the opportunity that I saw.
Speaker 3:I didn't see good books that walked through those three texts. There's what was it? Erdman's had this little book the Lord, the, our Father, but it assumed so much and it was just, I don't know, it didn't quite hit the audience. I used it with my own boys a lot. They loved the book, but I don't think they remember anything from it, and so that was really what we wanted to do with these books was to just say, hey, every Christian family, this is the library that you need, are these three books and take these things, learn the very words, and then go and look at the explanations and glosses that Harold Sinkbile and Ben Myers offer, and that's gonna set you on a whole path with your children to talk about these things.
Speaker 1:I like this idea of them being a foundation to build on. I often find that a lot of the kids resources I look at jump so quickly to life lessons or application that I feel like my kids aren't actually getting Bible, they're not getting foundation of doctrine. We do this little podcast in addition to this one called let's Talk Bible, where my nine year old and my seven year old, my son and daughter, joined me and we've been going section by section through Luke's Gospel and trying to discuss backgrounds to the Bible and just get the stories of scripture into my kids and hopefully, the families that are listening as well too. That's one of the things I liked about this series. It's not telling you obey your parents, be kind to kids at school, important lessons, but instead it's trying to give you that foundation. The word we keep using, this catechism. Maybe you could take a second to break down the approach of catechism and why you think that's needed for families today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I want to say well, and one brief aside is with kids, so often we just want to teach them ethics, and that's the thing that people really hunker down on and a lot of ways, ethics. I like to say that ethics isn't hard, it's quite straightforward. We know what is sinful and we know what is not, and we all get the sense of like oh yeah, there are complexities to things and I understand why you did that sinful thing, why I did that sinful thing, but we all do have this sense of what is right and what is wrong. The difficulty really is the doing of the thing, but the thing that children and Christians need so badly is the promise they need to know. I don't know that people.
Speaker 3:I've been reading this strange book about Islam and Jesus and the book is so disorienting to me because it presents, as I read it, a religion that doesn't have a promise. It just says what God's expectations are for you and you don't actually know that you can satisfy them. This is a really unique, wild thing about the gospel that the God who made heaven and earth has given you a promise to forgive your sins and to be present with you. How do you know this? Because he's given you his word. It's really wild and I think that's an easy thing to be so familiar with that we lose sight of the wealth of that insight.
Speaker 3:Anyway, so back to catechism and the sort of foundations here. The foundations that I like to think of are basically in Luther's small catechism, which is a commentary on the Ten Commandments, the Apostles Creed and the Lord's Prayer. He outlines the structure there of classical instruction. This is being recovered in America now with school school. But classical instruction is memorize a text. These are the very words. You may not know all of them, Just memorize them so that you have this great familiarity and you can return to them. And once you have those words memorized, go and memorize what they mean. And then, once you have those meanings understood, then you can go and you can restate these true things in different words.
Speaker 3:And that's a really different approach from what I grew up with or what I see. The temptation that I see folks have is they're like, well, he descended into hell. That's hard and kids don't know what that means. So let's not talk about it, We'll just talk about what it means. But then you end up you have to give them the very words. The words are what convey the meaning. So we're trying to describe sort of this abstraction. And how will kids latch onto that? You have to say, well, he descended into hell. And then eventually they're going to be like, oh, what is hell? Well, hell is where death, that's death's house, that's where the dead are and that's where Jesus went. And then you can start walking through those simple things.
Speaker 3:At the beginning it's, of course, true, like with all language. What does hello mean to a baby? I don't know, but this is how they learn language. So let's not try to rethink it too hard. And that's where teaching the catechism is the same thing. We are giving children the language of faith, the language of the Bible, and we're fooling ourselves if we think that we know all of what these things mean as well. We certainly don't. There was some other thought that I had going along there, but yeah, anyway, I think those are the. Oh, I was just thinking all of this.
Speaker 3:Another phrase for this is the rule of faith. That's how you read the Bible. It's according to these three things Ten Commandments, Apostles, Creed and the Lord's Prayer. And even with the rule of faith, there's been a great tendency with scholars to not say the rule of faith is these words. They'll just say things like oh, it has a Trinitarian shape. Well, that's not very useful. That's not very helpful for normal people. What does that mean? And so that's all of what this goes back to is we're trying to really go back to the basics and say you know, Catechese, this isn't dumbing down the Bible, it's not dumbing down theology or biblical studies. It's giving you the big total whole thing and things that will make better theologians and better biblical studies folks. These are the basics that those people need as well to really do their jobs well and their vocation well.
Speaker 1:I often find, in conversations with my kids too, that they are far more perceptive and wise than we sometimes give them credit for. I mean, I even remember in my own life you know, in high school you're taking advanced US government and politics, you're taking a trig class, you're learning chemistry equations, and yet at youth group you know we have to simplify everything and try to make it understandable. Well, kids are probably far more capable than we sometimes give them credit. Natasha, I'm curious to hear a little bit about how perhaps I know you have children how you've used these books, but also how you see parents or families, or maybe even congregations. How did you imagine these books being used to help do that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good question, Kind of like Todd was saying. I feel like there's kind of two modes that this book takes and you can see with the formatting, there's the basic text, which is you know our Father, who art in heaven, you know, first line of the Lord's Prayer. If you could read these books just reading the original words, as Todd was saying, you know you could open these books and look through the pictures and just read the Lord's Prayer. And then there's kind of like a smaller text or just this like gloss, you know, kind of like usually said in the form of a prayer and said in the form of like questions and statements like this is what I believe, or Lord, you know, like here our prayer, you know where it's kind of giving you more words, like the kind of like chewing your cudd kind of words. And so I see these books being and I guess I guess there's three modes really there's the main text, there's the gloss and then there's the art. There's three different kinds of richness in these books. And so if I was to use my own family as an example, you know we say the Lord's Prayer for morning and evening prayer as a family together. You know it's part of our family prayer liturgy. It's one of the sections we just we all say it together, and so sometimes what we'll do is we'll open up the Fat Cat book and we are turning the pages as a family, looking at these pictures saying the Lord's Prayer. So the book is being used not just as a way to see the words written out, but kids are connecting the words with images, which, you know. I, as a homeschooling mom, I've learned, and I'm sure a lot of people have seen, like kids can cement words in their minds so much easier and quicker if they're connecting them with either images or songs, you know. And so the kids are able to memorize these words because they're connecting them with pictures, but not just words. They're connecting them with events in Jesus life.
Speaker 2:With the Fat Cat books we have Jesus on every page. We try to tell you these truths through his life. So you have like you have the big words and you have the pictures being used, but then the gloss is kind of like for deeper reflection. You know, sometimes my 10 year old actually she's 11 now, gosh, my 11 year old will be sitting there reading the Fat Cat book by herself, and then she'll come over and start like asking me questions and talking about.
Speaker 2:You know, the Descent to Hell page is like maybe most children's like favorite page, because it's talking about something that no other kid's book is talking about. Why did like Todd was saying like, why did Jesus go to the place of the dead? Oh, here's a picture of him pulling up Adam and Eve and he's going down to the place where people died and he's able to raise the dead, you know, and come in and conquer death. And so there are all these questions on that in the gloss, saying like, where did Jesus go? He went down as far as we have fallen.
Speaker 2:And it's giving this richness where kids can actually like you were saying Chase, like kids like have a lot of deeper questions that we give them credit for, like let's actually talk about these things with them.
Speaker 2:So it's giving words for parents, it's giving questions for you to ask together and it's giving kind of some concrete things that kids can hold on to and chew, and so that's me using them just at a family setting, but they can be used at church, you know, in the same way, like for this season of Advent you know I'm ankle getting a Christian in the season of Advent, for the Christmas Eve service, my priest asked if he could have digital versions of the pictures of the King of Christmas, art where the Magi are searching through the high places and low places and Heron's Temple and the places of the rich.
Speaker 2:They're looking for the King, like where is he to be found? And so what they did was they displayed it up on the projector, you know, for like the whole congregation to see, and my priest you know, because he wanted there to be in the service, he wanted there to be something for the kids to read from, and so he showed the images and then he read the book from the pulpit or whatever, and kind of had some kids come around and he was reading the book. So it's like I've seen it used in a family setting, I've seen it used in the classroom, but then also, you know, kind of this is also there for the church. It's a gift to the church to say here's some words, here's some images, and here's like what Todd said, here's the basic words. We're not dressing up the Lord's prayer by saying, dear daddy, we're, we're letting it be what it is you know, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's great. Yeah, there's those three modes of reading so you can read just the text straight through, have the kids recite it, drop out words, have them memorize it. You can read the art as the children you know what are you seeing in this image. Or you can just read the gloss To read the whole book with the whole gloss. That's that would. That would be a lot of time, but I think those are sort of the different ways that you could spend about 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:I like the idea that these are books you're returning to. So both of you have mentioned that they're books that can stay out, that can be picked up, that can be used even in a regular rhythm of life. Should mention. I think we've probably stated it, but the core books within the series are the Apostles Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer as well as I think we've also alluded to. I believe there's the King of Easter and the King of Christmas out. Are there other books in the series? What's the plans for days to come with the Fat Cat series?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's another one that's on a somewhere in the ocean on a barge, called who is our King. It's a board book that just the premise was. We wanted to think of all the animals that were in the different places where Jesus was and to have a book for small, small children Just having fun looking at Jesus with animals, and all it does is it's a very simple sentence. Basically that's saying who is this boy, who is this man who died for you and me? It's my King and God Jesus. The words are a little different, but that's basically the idea is that here this man is your God. He's the one that set you free. Other than that, that'll be out. What's temper, I think, is when it goes on sale.
Speaker 3:And then Tasha's working on a really fun project right now. There's a morning prayer and an evening prayer and the book. I don't know if you've seen one of these things. It's hard without showing you. But if you take a book and you look at the front cover and then you just flip it so that the spine is still in your left hand and then the other side, you're still able to read it, normally if you do that with a book, you're looking at the cover and you flip it spine still in your left hand. The text is going to be upside down in the back. In this case we're looking at the front. It says morning prayer and it says evening prayer, and so there'll be these two families. It'd be more interesting to hear Tasha talk about it, but they're going through this morning prayer and this evening prayer and they meet in the middle.
Speaker 1:What a great idea. So is it meant to be read, then, sort of morning and evening as well?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So it's just a very simple prayer. It's adapted from Luther's morning prayer, which is itself an adaptation of a prayer. The tradition, so, like the morning prayer, is the one that I know, which is our heavenly Father. We give you thanks, through your dear Son, jesus Christ, that you have graciously kept us through the night, and we pray that you would keep us this day safe from all sin and evil, and all our thoughts, words and deeds would please you Into your hands. We commend ourselves our bodies and souls and all things. Let your holy angels be with us. The evil foe may have no power over us. Amen. And the evening prayer is just that same structure, just flipped for the evening, so asking for forgiveness. So these are prayers that you can pray with a very young small child and keep building as they get older into like a proper morning prayer where you're reading the Bible and stuff. But this is sort of that first building walk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great to hear more to come. And did I see there is also a coloring book, is that true?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there are three coloring books for the Apostles Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. The Ten Commandments one is particularly fun. There are little animals hidden at whatever number of commandment it is. There's that number of beasts somewhere in there to find. So, yeah, there are those three teaching tools as well, and at the bottom it has the Bible verses that are being referenced in the art and in the text, and that's something that we haven't brought up is in the back of each of these books there is a little family prayer service.
Speaker 3:You go through, say some Psalms together, recite the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles Creed or the Ten Commandments, say a couple prayers that are on a child's heart. What are they thankful for or sad about? And then it ends with into your hands we commend ourselves, etc. And 2 Corinthians 13-14, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the community of the Holy Spirit. So a little thing that I think Tasha wants to say something.
Speaker 3:But one thing that I'm thinking with this is what I find is that our reaction is when we talk about prayer or worship or the gospel, people don't often want to prescribe anything. They want to say you're free and you are, you're free to do what works, but people really want some specifics. They don't know what to do. That's why they're not doing it. And then there's a tendency that we want to be very specific about law, but because the law always accuses, we don't need to get into that, and I've seen a lot of family worship books where it's just hey, this is one more obligation you have to do, and if you aren't doing it, you aren't a good parent and your kids are going to not follow the faith, etc.
Speaker 3:And so the hope here is to offer a positive thing. This is something you get to do with your kids, and some days they're going to be really hard. They're not going to pay attention. You're not going to be very happy about it, but this is sewing in tears. We don't know what joy you'll reap with one day. Anyway, tasha, was there something? Sorry, I felt like you were going to say something.
Speaker 2:No, no, that was really good.
Speaker 1:Well, I do have a writing question, so I always like to try to ask some for the writers that are listening, and we've covered a couple other kids type books before, but when it comes to I think, both of you I know Todd, you're acquiring nonfiction as well too, and Natasha and I got a chance to talk, before we started, about some of the writing work she's doing in nonfiction and fiction all of that outside of kids books. But for those interested in particularly working on, maybe, a kids project, some advice or guidance for authors on how to go about writing for children and what that process looks like, maybe even with the publisher.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. It's a very difficult thing writing for children. I think I mean, that's a lot of. What you do have to hold in your heart is that, like you're saying, children are smart. They have the big questions that we have too. They often. Some children are afraid, but often they're not very afraid of these things, they're just yeah, what happens when we bury grandpa in the ground? They're just going to ask. These questions matter effectively and there's a great blessing in that.
Speaker 3:But the difficulty for adults is we feel all these emotions and insecurities because we know we're next, and so sometimes we think, oh, these things are really complicated, let's not talk about it. But we can talk about big, broad strokes with kids, and so we shouldn't be afraid to give kids hard truths along with lovely, wonderful promises. We really do have to give them those things. When children come up for communion, we don't need to change the words. Say the words this is Jesus' body broken for you. This is his blood, drink it. We don't change the words Because that sets up some pretty weird stuff. Later At some point we have to adjust back Like, oh, we use these weird words and now how do we get the real ones, but anyway. So I think that's a big first step is just taking children seriously. They have, we have something to teach them and they have something to teach us. And the most important thing is to be as simple as possible and really strong writing where actions are lined up with verbs. All these are things that you should be doing anyway.
Speaker 3:With other sorts of writing, the actors are the subjects of the sentences, but you're wanting to be concrete and personal. I know that's an abstract way of talking about that, but this is yeah, that's the most important thing that we're not talking about abstractions. So like, hallowed be thy name that gloss in there that Hal Sankt Bile has talks about sanctification or in holiness, but without using either of those words, because those are abstractions that then are. It's difficult. What does that mean? Just say, talk about holiness, talk about personify it with Jesus and stories from his life. Those are the things that I think we just have to constantly come back to, and sometimes this also means saying a lot less than we'd like to. I don't know if you've had this experience, chase, when you're writing, but sometimes I find I'm getting all these words out on the page and share it with somebody else and they're like I don't know what you mean.
Speaker 3:And they'll say could you explain more? And so my first impulse is oh, I have to say more words, but then what I really need to go do is go back and start cutting out words. I need to rip out all the sentences that are raising the questions, and so I end up with something much shorter, and then it's something that people are like oh yeah, I understand what you're tracking with you. So, in a way, children are a type for all readers. But a lot of this is starting with the right questions. I've seen some pretty complicated things that people want to do with children. They're just not yeah, they're not ready for that. For example, somebody had wanted to do a children's book on the Calcedonian definition, like actually using the words of it. It's a great impulse, but, yeah, without confusion, et cetera. I don't know how you illustrate that or talk to a six-year-old about it. So those are the things that I'd go back to respecting the child's heart and mind simple, strong writing and then thinking concretely, thinking personally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's great advice, particularly this idea of taking our children seriously. I think that's a good calling not only for us as parents but as pastors, the church, and certainly what you're doing with the series Natasha. For those who might be interested in illustration, maybe some thoughts on how to pursue that or what it looks like to be able to. Can you grow as an illustrator, particularly as you're doing it as a believer as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, it's all very similar to what Todd was saying, that simpler and more concrete is best with kids. It's not because kids are not as smart, it's because childhood is when we lay the foundations that we then build complex things on. And so, yeah, you have people who want to write these children's books and they're trying to explain big things to kids. They think they need to give more, all this, more detail when really boil it down to the most concrete truth and punch that forward, and I think that's exactly what you want to be doing with your art is like it's interesting.
Speaker 2:When I look at a lot of children's book art, people are often going like too detailed in the wrong directions, like they spend ages on this person's hair, but their expression is very lifeless. And so what you want to do is you want to start like I mean, I started in cartooning, which is all about simplifying things, and like how can you know? Like my first mode of cartooning was those stick people and it was like how can you get like a really strong emotion with just a few lines? And so when you're doing artwork whenever I'm doing artwork I say for a fat cat page, you start extremely simple with the thumbnail you know something really small and you gesture it out page placement, and then the main characters, where you want the eye focus to go, and then expressions, because those are like the three big things that dictate where all the rest of the detail goes. Because you know, you look at some fat cat spreads and it's like, oh my gosh, there's like so many animals here and I'll just let you know that's Todd's fault.
Speaker 1:You didn't get excited about the animals in the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great, yeah it's so great because it's like where's Wormie? Oh my gosh, there's so many things on this page. Oh, wormie, somewhere on the page. You know we've been doing Wormie recently. He's a little green worm but all that detail is great, but it has to come. It serves the.
Speaker 2:The detail has to serve the, the foundations. You know the page placement and then the place where your eye is drawn and then the expressions and you know what it's telling. And so you know sometimes we'll have this thing where you know there's a page for forgiveness of sins, where Jesus, the one where Jesus has drawn the line in the sand and he's kneeling down to help up the woman who's caught in adultery. And I have people in the background, the ones who have been throwing the stone, the stones, and you see on their expressions they're either disappointed or they're feeling bad or they're feeling ashamed or confused and they're walking away. But I've got them all, like some of them are in the way foreground, where they're kind of silhouetted and dark, and then I've got people on the sidelines and all of their colors are like blue and cold and it's kind of pulling them away. But then right at the center of the page you have all this warmth around Jesus, the woman caught in adultery, and he's looking right at her and he's smiling. And so you have. And she's looking down and she's feeling ashamed. And you have these, you. What I'm doing is I'm trying to say what's. It's a very simplest point of what am I trying to tell with this art? Oh, this is Jesus forgiving her. Jesus and this woman are having this moment where he's looking directly at her and saying you do not need to be ashamed. And that's where I have all the warmth, that's where your eye is drawn. And then, yeah, I do want to have the people who had been trying to stone her, but they're not the main focus, they're kind of in the background.
Speaker 2:And if you want to spend time on the page, you start. You start noticing the people and their expressions, and I'll hear this later. She's kind of throwing her rock down onto the ground, like well, I guess I'm not going to throw this rock then. And so it's like you want the art to be guiding you, like starting from concrete, like we do as kids, we start with the most concrete, simple thing and then you build detail on top of that. So it's like the longer time you spend on the page, the more you start noticing the peripheral details. But the first thing you see on the page needs to be the main point.
Speaker 2:So that would be my little tip for illustrators is like keeping the main, the those main three things, the main three things, and then once you have those really concrete, like sometimes I'll send Todd a really simple page like here you go, here's the main things, and he's like cool, now add animals, now add detail. This needs more life. Like this side of the page there's like almost nobody on it. Go, put people there, you know, so I can like then start adding all this detail. But yeah, that would be, that would be kind of my. And as far as like finding finding jobs in the in in the illustrating world, like that can be really hard. But but I would say, like my, my main piece of advice there would just be like make lots of art and if someone offers you something to do, just do it and keep, keep on making art and just putting it out there. That's, that's kind of the main thing you got to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's good advice for artists and writers? I think too. So again, the series we're talking about is the Fat Cat series from Lex and Press. The three main books, the Apostle's Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer. If listeners are interested in picking up a copy of the book or perhaps they have them they want to add the coloring books or future books. Where's the best place for people to learn about the series and to get those, those books, for their own family?
Speaker 3:Well, you can find them where our fine books are sold, as we like to say, but you can also go to lexandpresscom and find them there. They're available on Amazon as well, and, as there is a weird feature I suppose for for the bigger church things, that you could go and if you're a Logos user, you are able to get the digital file so you could project this in your church.
Speaker 1:That's good to know, that's great.
Speaker 1:Read it out loud so Well, todd and Natasha, it's such an honor to have you and thank you for all the hard work you've put into the series. So just my my gratitude is extended to you, also my prayers for future projects. I think we need, we need resources like this. As a parent, as a pastor, we have to be able to, to be intentional about the way we're introducing our children to the faith, and so to have people that are thinking long and hard about how to do that well is just a really a gift to the body. So thanks for all the time and work you've put into the series.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you, chase. Have a nice one.
Speaker 1:As always, you can find show notes for today's episode by going to pastorridercom. I've got information on the books that we've discussed, as well as links to the Lexham website, where you can learn more about the project. Also, if you haven't subscribed to the show, feel free to do that. It's the best way to be able to keep up with upcoming episodes. I've got some great conversations coming up and also, maybe you'd take a moment to leave a review. You can do that wherever you listen to podcasts, by clicking one of the star ratings or typing out a brief message. It helps me get feedback and continue to improve, as always. Thanks for listening, until next time.