When we think back upon the first stories that we start reading to our little ones, many of them are fiction.  Clifford, the adorable, big red dog isn’t real, Barney the purple dinosaur doesn’t exist, and the cat in the hat didn’t really come over to babysit.   We can still learn so much from these characters and their stories. Others are more realistic, but still fiction:  the Giving Tree didn’t really “love” a little boy, and Mom didn’t sneak into her adult son’s house and rock him to sleep every night (Love you Forever)!

These stories are FUN.  We should be reading these stories to our kids.  But, we can also expose them to nonfiction, to truth.  

My children were both miracles, products of much prayer.  After years of infertility, God brought us our son through the beautiful gift of adoption.  Then, when he was just two months old, I became pregnant.   The kids were less than a year apart, and we were overjoyed! We wanted them to know their stories from the start.  So, we ordered some personalized books, about each of their stories, and read them to the kids from the very start.  My son’s book told his adoption story, and my daugher’s book told her birth story.  Both understood, from the moment they could, that God brought them to us in different, purposeful ways.  It was a gradual and natural understanding of our family dynamics.

Biblical stories and those about historical folks who help others can help lay foundations and inspire our kids, even at young ages.   When I taught middle school, we taught fiction (false- remember F=F) and non-fiction (not false) as well as primary vs secondary sources.    I loved using The Diary of Anne Frank as an example of a non-fiction, primary source.   Since the diary is written in her firsthand perspective, this is a primary source.   I got choked up telling my class about her story and reading parts of it aloud, and many of the kids were inspired to go check out her book and read her words for themselves.  Reading her diary, we understand the truth about what she, her family, and the Jewish people endured. There can be value and inspiration within the truth, and there are many non-fiction stories (Biblical stories for kids) that our littles can understand from an early age.

As we Book Time with Our Kids, there’s a place for both fiction and non-fiction; fantasy and fun and imagining and in real stories of inspiration. There’s value in understanding the history of our world, the wonders of creation, and God’s intentional design. There’s certainly a place to start laying a foundation of faith and teaching them biblical truths, tending to these precious, developing, young minds.

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