Padded cover board book
24 pages
Tommy Nelson, 2014
ISBN 978-0-7180-3208-1
SRP $9.99
Ages 0-3
Written by Claire Page
Illustrated by Clare Fennell

When our family began expanding with grandboys nearly eight years ago, I found a wonderful board book called I Love You Through and Through, written by Bernadette Rosetti Shustak and illustrated by Caroline Jayne Church. It’s perfect for parents and grandparents to read toddlers to assure them they are loved just for who they are, inside and out.

So I was happy to find God Knows All About Me on a bookstore shelf two weeks ago–a similar size, format, and design–and with an added faith element.

Little ones will find the sturdy board pages easy for to turn themselves. The illustration style is colorful, fun, a little quirky, and multi-ethnic–which I appreciate. (I would even prefer not to have a traditional blond child on the cover, but at least he doesn’t have blue eyes.)

Well-paced short text on each two or four pages forms a unit and rhymes well. Each unit ends by repeating “God knows all about me.”

When I’m good,
when I’m bad,
when I’m happy,
when I’m sad,
God knows all about me.

It’s a message some might fear children would take as a negative–but there’s no need. God knows us because he made us, and because he is sovereign and knows all things. And he loves us! The last spread makes the intent of the message clear:

From the beginning . . .
to the end,
God will always be my friend:
God knows all about me.

A nice addition for parents and grandparents at the end of the book might have been these verses from Psalm 139: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.”

DIANE

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