DOUBLE Book Review: It's Good to Be a Boy/Girl
Back to School
As summer winds down and school ramps up, kids have lots of feelings about themselves as they get introduced to new teachers, acquainted to friends old and new, and make their way into new environments. The battle begins about what they’ll wear, the image they want to show off, and how they’ll think of themselves as they navigate re-entry into the school year. As conversations about sexuality and gender seem to be shifting to earlier ages every year, one thing our kids should be certain of is God’s goodness in creating both boys and girls.
Thankfully, our friends at The Good Book For Children have a great pair of books to remind kids (and parents) that we can celebrate all that God made boys and girls to be! Champ Thornton tackled It’s Good to Be a Boy, and Jen and Zoe Oshman (a mother-daughter team up!) put together It’s Good to Be a Girl. Both books are beautifully illustrated by Hsulynn Pang. While each book dives into a particular gender, they’re laid out similarly and have their own catchy rhyme that’s repeated through the text for readers to latch on to.
What’s Inside?
Each book starts with a parent talking to their child, reminding them of how thankful they are to have a son/daughter. They affirm that both boys and girls are special and needed in the world God’s created. We’re taken back to the creation accounts in Genesis to see how men and women were created, and the specific roles that God gave them in the garden that would shape how they each function into eternity.
Adam, and the men that came after him, worked to make things grow and keep things safe. With Jesus’s help, boys are able to move toward people and problems with love and wisdom. Eve, the story tells us, was created by God to love and serve others just like he does. With Jesus’s help, girls can do anything God asks them to do. I love that the writers start with the creation narrative as they sketch out what’s great about boyhood/girlhood.
From there, each book shows kids how these roles are played out today through various jobs and walks of life. Women are pictured as moms and doctors, and men are seen serving their communities and looking for ways to help. This helps kids see how boys and girls are needed in real ways inside the communities we live in.
Our journey doesn’t stop there though. The authors take us back to the Bible, showing us examples of men and women who obeyed God and did extraordinary things to show God’s glory and goodness to the world. We see Joseph working hard to care for his family and all of Egypt, Deborah ruling in the book of Judges, Nehemiah helping to build a city wall, and Esther working to keep Israel safe. Men and women, both being obedient to what God called them to do and empowered by him to see it through.
Next, we get to Jesus himself. Both books remind us of who Jesus is (God’s own son and our savior!), what he did (served people around him, performed miracles, spoke truth), and how he rescued us on the cross. Kids are reminded to trust and follow him so that they can be empowered to follow his lead in their lives as well. Boy and girls need the gospel to live into the calling God has for them.
Finally, each book highlights men and women who followed Jesus faithfully and did amazing things in the world around them, served their neighbors, and glorified God in the work they’d been called to. We’re introduced to writers, runners, educators, missionaries, and musicians. These quick blurbs about the lives of these historical figures highlight what men and women are able to accomplish as love and serve the God who created them.
Between each section of writing there’s a sing-song refrain that helps kids remember that it is indeed good to be the people God created them to be.
“High-five, praise God, and shout for joy, because it’s good to be a boy!”
“Let’s thank our God, rejoice and twirl, because it’s good to be a girl!”
These little interludes helped connect each section with my youngest as we read together. By the end of the book, he was repeating each chorus right along with me. It was a fun element to keep things engaging and light as he was putting everything together.
Each book is wonderfully illustrated by Pang. The same art style flows through both volumes, though each seems to have it’s own color palette to make them feel a little more inviting to the boys and girls it’s drawing in. I really appreciated the different faces and colors the books highlighted, and all the vignettes of biblical characters and present day life that are shown off. They’re relatively quick reads, but these illustrations allow for some conversation about what kids are seeing, what they think the folks in the pictures are up to, and which illustration they see themselves in.
The Verdict
Both these books are incredibly helpful in the ever shifting sand of gender in our culture. They do a great job of starting these conversations about boys/girls, why it matters, what the Bible has to say about it all, and how they can celebrate the way God made them. They’re both easy and exciting to read with kids, and could be useful in your own home or in a Sunday School classroom (the repetition of the chorus could work great in a group of kids!).
Each book is a great way to start these conversations with elementary school aged children, and will help parents and minsitry leaders lay the groundwork for deeper conversations that will inevitably come up as they get older. God-given gender is worth celebrating, and It’s Good to Be a Girl/Boy is a great way to get the party started for kids and families.