One of the things I want to do with the Very Best Bible Stories series for preschoolers is to integrate learning with reading and enjoying these classic stories. So in Moses and the Very Big Rescue, readers learn how to count down from 10. In Noah and the Very Big Boat, kids discover the crazy world of onomatopoeia (words that sound like something—splat!). David and the Very Big Giant conveys the concept of relative and superlative pronouns (David was small, smaller, smallest; Goliath was big, bigger, biggest).
Watching one of David Attenborough’s amazing nature documentaries recently, it struck me how astonishing colour is in creation. Sir David, bless him, thinks that the whole thing was a glorious accident. But we know differently.
"Creation is an astonishing act of creativity from the fertile mind of our loving God and Father."
It struck me what enormous fun it must have been as God the Father and Jesus the Son spoke the universe and our world into existence. The deeper we go, and the more we are able to examine the structure, mechanisms and physiology of our planet and its creatures, the more we see a God who delights in the world he made.
You can imagine (reverently), some sort of conversation going on:
“What colour shall we do this horsey thing?”
“We’ve already done brown and black and dappled; hmmmm…”
“I know, let’s throw them a curve ball, and do it in Black and White stripes”
(Howls of hilarious laughter from a crowd of watching Angels)
“And if we call it something starting with ‘Z’ the kids will just love it…”
And so the Zebra came to be…
I wanted to capture this sense of delight in creation that our Lord clearly had. He made the world to astonish, to excite and to give us deep-down belly laughs, as we gawk at giraffes and gasp at the brilliant colours of guppies. Looking at the use of colour in creation inspires a sense of intrigue and interest about discovering the world, leading kids to discover a bigger vision of how utterly brilliant God is.
Books of colours for small kids can be, if we’re honest, a bit boring. Red, yellow, green and blue are about the limits of where they go. But slightly older kids love learning long words! By sharing broader hues, kids get to attach big words to the astonishing variety of nuances of colour the human eyes can detect.
According to scientists we can distinguish around a million, although Apple tells me that my computer screen can display 16.7 million—presumably to impress a passing housefly that can see in that range. Isn’t it fun to use Periwinkle or Pumpkin instead of boring old blue or orange?
Jennifer Davison has done an outstanding job of rendering the words pictorially. It is, quite literally, a riot of colour. I hope that you are able to use this book to convey the same sense of excitement to your children about creation, the creator, and our opportunity to discover more about both as we see the marvellous works he has done.
Tim Thornborough is the founder and Publishing Director of The Good Book Company. He is series editor of Explore Bible-reading notes, the author of The Very Best Bible Stories series, and has contributed to many books published by The Good Book Company and others. Tim is married to Kathy, and they have three adult daughters.
