Prayer For A Child

I love children's picture books. If you know me you already know that.

In this time of Thanksgiving and Gratitude I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorites that are in the spirit of the season. I picked up this little gem a while ago.

Prayer for a Child by Rachel Field, Illustrations by Elizabeth Orton Jones.

This lovely little book won the Caldecott Award in 1945. It is a sweet prayer that a child can offer. In Elizabeth Orton Jones Caldecott acceptance speech she said:

“

Drawing is very like a prayer. Drawing is a reaching for something away beyond you. As you sit down to work in the morning, you feel as if you were on top of a hill. And it is as if you were seeing for the first time. You take your pencil in hand. You'd like to draw what you see. And so you begin. You try ... . Every child in the world has a hill, with a top to it. Every child-black, white, rich, poor, handicapped, unhandicapped. And singing is what the top of each hill is for. Singing-drawing-thinking-dreaming-sitting in silence . . . saying a prayer. I should like every child in the world to know that he has a hill, that that hill is his no matter what happens, his and his only, forever.

I love these illustrations and I think part of it may be that they remind of so many of the picture books of my childhood.