Also by this author: Held: 31 Biblical Reflections on God's Comfort and Care in the Sorrow of Miscarriage, What Are Hands For?, What Are Eyes For? Board Book, How Do We Know Christianity Is Really True?, What Happens When We Die?, Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?
Series: Training Young Hearts #3
Published by Good Book Company on January 30, 2024
Genres: Children's
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Practical, fun tool for parents raising kids. Encourages obedience motivated by God’s love and grace.
Fun lift-the-flap board book that motivates small children to use their ears in a Christ-like way.
This helpful and engaging training tool will help parents to teach their kids that God didn’t make their ears so that they could ignore instructions, but for positive things like hearing all kinds of noises and sounds, and especially to hear and obey God's word.
Not only will children be encouraged to follow Jesus’ example, but they’ll also be reassured that he loves us no matter what we do. He can forgive us when we fail, and help us to change.
This book is part of a series called Training Young Hearts, that addresses the attitudes of the heart that underpin behavior and explains how the gospel of grace enables us to change.
Parents, teachers, and other loved ones can refer back to these resources when specific behaviors need both to be corrected and to be connected to forgiveness, grace and growth.
In this board book, Abbey Wedgeworth teaches kids about what God made our ears for. She gives examples like listening to music and hearing directions, and then she writes about things that we shouldn’t do with our ears, such as tuning people out and ignoring them, or listening to lies. She introduces Jesus after that, saying that he was a child once, and that he always used his ears to hear God and others. The following pages cover Jesus’s temptation after forty days in the desert, saying that he tuned out Satan’s lies and listened to God’s word. After this, Wedgeworth encourages kids that when they ignore instructions or listen to lies that lead them to disobedience, God hears their prayers for forgiveness and help.
What Are Ears For? expresses important concepts in very simple, child-friendly terms, and the illustrations from Emma Randall are colorful, expressive, and fun. Every page also includes a flap to lift, and these work very well. The flaps come up easily, and the material is thick enough to survive many repeated readings, as long as a child isn’t too rough with them. The flaps aren’t just for fun, either, since the illustrations and words under each flap are integral to the book.
The illustrations depict lots of different children with diverse skin tones and hair types, and also include two kids with glasses and a boy with a prosthetic leg. However, considering the book’s topic, I thought it was a missed opportunity that none of the kids had hearing aids. It could also be helpful for a book like this to mention that even when people can’t hear through their ears, they can still communicate and attend to what others are saying in different ways.
What Are Ears For? can help children appreciate God’s design for the human body, and can help them understand the difference between positive and harmful choices in everyday life. Although the books in this series can feel slightly redundant because they follow the same structure and formula, the illustrations are all unique and the words are different. Many parents will find this board book helpful, since it gives them a concrete way to engage their kids with important topics instead of just giving verbal instruction.