Children's Lit

I totally agree with the articles we read. Children's literature touches us in a way no other literature can. Tell me this - how many times have you read your favorite book from your childhood? Many, many times right? Now what about that latest New York Times Best seller for adult fiction you just picked up off the shelf last week? When you finish it, what is the likelihood that you will ever read it again? I have read the Chronicles of Narnia once and listened to the radio theatre of them too many times to count. I'm still moved by Aslan's death, the lilies at the world's end, and the shouting of "further up, further in!" However, many of the adult fiction books I've read, like novels by Dean Koontz or Nora Roberts, I will probably never pick up again. I know what happens, and there's no more mystery in them than that. I think movies can work a little like that too, at least for me. Though I love my disaster movies, dramas, and TV series sets, I am starting to collect films that I watched when I was a kid. There's just something more magical and believable about fairy tales, trolls, a little boy discovering the power of "Nightmare Land," and a big fuzzy grey squirrel-looking animal named Totoro. These films never lose their magic. Some of the most complex things in life are more easily understood if looked at through a child's eyes. Think of our faith. In the Bible, Jesus proclaims that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to children. We must come to Christ with a childlike faith - our "grown-up" faith asks too many questions and has too many doubts when Jesus simply wants us to Believe and Follow. I think a passage I read in Luke last night sums it up rather well: "At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ' I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.'" (Luke 10:21)