When our children started their own families, one of them told me not to throw away the books we had read to them in their early years, that we would soon be reading them to grandchildren.

Fast-forward a few years, and some of our “classics” have become popular with a new generation. Other popular authors are writing more children’s books these days.

I have developed an informal sense of priorities among these books for reading aloud to our grandchildren—with the oldest one now four years old—and for reading aloud to preschoolers in some school and ministry settings in Indianapolis.

The Bible

In the top category I would put the books that have the actual words of Scripture in them along with a picture on every page. I have never found too many of them, but here are a few. We bought a copy of The Book of Acts in the early 1980s and wore it out. But I found a used copy and still appreciate the drawings that come with the text, which was published by College Press Publishing Company in Joplin, Mo.

Psalm 127 and Psalm 103 come with fascinating and detailed artwork by Johannah Bluedorn. She also has a fun story about Mr. Pippin, a raccoon that spent the summer with her family.

Tim Ladwig of the World Impact ministry sets Psalm Twenty-Three and The Lord’s Prayer in an urban context.

Carine Mackenzie has a nice series on the attributes of God, with a Scripture verse to go with each page. Her series includes God Never Changes, God is Faithful, and more.

Susan Hunt offers a series of memory verses, through the alphabet, with an illustrative story for each passage, in My ABC Bible Verses: Hiding God’s Word in Little Hearts.

An old favorite, standing the test of time, is The Book of Jonah, illustrated by Peter Spier.

Pilgrim’s Progress

The next priority is one I missed in my childhood—reading Pilgrim’s Progress. I sensed that would be the best story, after Scripture, to give our grandchildren in these early years. Book publishers in England as well as America provide an interesting supply of shortened versions of the story, with illustrations.  For very young children I keep coming back to a 60-page version from Gospel Standard Trust Publications (2010) with excellent artwork on each page.   Great Commission Publications offers a 111-page version, with fewer illustrations, with an excellent map of Pilgrim’s journey that preschoolers find helpful. Dangerous Journey: The Story of Pilgrim’s Progress presents some vivid illustrations with a text geared to elementary age. I am learning as much as our grandchildren from this classic story, and I am getting some help from the Ligonier Ministries audiovisual teaching series entitled Pilgrim’s Progress: A Guided Tour by Derek Thomas.

R.C. Sproul

After Bunyan, I find that R.C. Sproul’s children’s books offer an unusual mix of great stories with profound biblical theology, including themes of justification by faith and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. A preschooler will love the stories and learn some good theology in the background. In Priest with Dirty Clothes, he covers the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and in The Prince’s Poison Cup, he focuses on the atonement.

C.S. Lewis and the Narnia tales

HarperCollins offers The World of Narnia Collection of four of the stories, with pictures on each page. Most of the text comes verbatim from the original Lewis stories, and for preschoolers the abridged version seems to have all the magic of the original.

Church History

Sinclair Ferguson has started a church history series with names such as Ignatius, Polycarp, and Irenaeus that are obscure even to adults. He promises to carry on right through the ages of heroes of the faith, to conclude with Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

With similar excellence Simonetta Carr offers biographies of Calvin, John Knox, and other heroes—challenging for preschoolers, who may need an adult to summarize some of the text and move on to the next page quickly enough to hold young readers’ attention.

Mark Twain

On a visit to Hannibal, Mo., when our children were young, I found a children’s version of The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain and read it aloud to our family at a restaurant. I remember laughing through parts of it, yet later realizing that it opened a door for our children to learn about King Edward VI, the young great reforming king of England, like King Josiah in the Bible. Now it is a great story to read to our grandchildren in that old abridged version with illustrations.

What seems to be key in reading to very young children is the quality of the story and the illustrations. Ben Hur and Robinson Crusoe still stand as great stories transcending the ages, illustrating truths of Scripture.

“Make time for books!” pleads Gladys Hunt in her classic work on family reading, Honey for a Child’s Heart. She wrote that book before the internet, cell phones, or Facebook, but her plea is still very timely.

—Russ Pulliam

Russ Puliiam is a contributing editor to the Witness. He is an elder in Second (Indianapolis, Ind.) RPC.