Wholesome children’s literature coming at a crucial time
Word on Fire Votive books are filled with quality stories that reflect Gospel values, along with gorgeous illustrations from some of the best Christian children’s authors.
Wholesome children’s literature coming at a crucial time
Word on Fire Votive books are filled with quality stories that reflect Gospel values, along with gorgeous illustrations from some of the best Christian children's authors.
Brandon Vogt: Welcome to this special interview. I’m joined today by my longtime friend and colleague Haley Stewart. Haley is the author of several award-winning books and is also a longtime blogger and podcaster. She hosts The Votive Podcast and the Word on Fire Book Club inside of our Word on Fire Institute. But today, we’re going to be discussing Haley’s role as the Managing Editor of Word on Fire Votive, our new imprint of books at Word on Fire for young readers.
She’s been working behind the scenes now for a couple of years preparing a ton of beautiful, interesting books that will be coming soon from Votive. So, Haley, welcome! It’s great to be with you and to talk about this exciting new initiative.
Haley Stewart: Thanks, Brandon. I’m so excited to talk about everything we have in the works with Votive!
BV: Let’s start off with your background. Tell us about your experience with kid’s books: were you always a reader growing up? What were some of your favorite books as a child?
HS: I was always a reader. I loved to read. Classics, fantasy, and historical fiction were my favorites. I loved Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet and the books in that series. I loved the Anne of Green Gables series by Lucy Maud Montgomery. One of my favorites was A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter, which is a little bit lesser known, and then J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings got me into fantasy. So I was a big reader, loved to read, and tried out a bunch of different genres.
BV: Now, you’ve long been interested in children’s literature from what we might call a professional perspective: through your authorship, your blogging, and your podcasting. But you’re also a mother with several kids. As a mother, how would you assess the current landscape of children’s books? What’s good? What’s missing?
HS: Well, I don’t want to paint with too dark a brush about the state of children’s literature. There are still a lot of good books being published. I just read a beautiful book by Daniel Nayeri for young adults called Everything Sad is Untrue, and it was just incredible and gives you hope that everything’s not as bad as it seems. Really beautiful books are still being published.
But I think there are two pretty widespread problems. One of them is a lack of respect for the child reader. The problems that come along with that are bad writing and illustrations that aren’t attractive, just not good quality, because there isn’t this respect for the person reading the book. Madeleine L’Engle is one of my favorite writers, and one of the things she said, which I think is so important and influences how I try to operate Votive, is, “If it’s not good enough for grown-ups, it’s not good enough for children.” So really having that sense that the person reading the book is important, is intelligent, and worthy of our respect, and part of that has to do with quality.
And the other piece with respecting the child reader is that you’ll often see books that weren’t really written for a child. There may be a book that tries to present a certain idea that a parent is going to feel good about purchasing but doesn’t really have the child in mind at the heart of the project. That’s something I think you see a lot if you go to Barnes and Noble and similar book stores and look around at what books are being displayed.
But the other thing of concern is that it feels like the vast majority of middle-grade and young adult fiction is very dystopian. And I don’t think that’s necessarily bad. There are some great dystopian novels that really spark great conversations. My son recently read The Giver by Lois Lowry, and he really wanted to talk about those ideas, and I think that’s fantastic.
But I think that we have to balance those dystopian themes with some themes of Christian hope. Otherwise, it’s really offering a picture of despair to our children that everything’s crumbling, everything’s terrible, and this is the kind of world we live in. And so I think it’s really important to balance that out with the kind of hope that we see in, say, The Lord of the Rings. It’s not that everything is fine; there are big problems that we have to wrestle with. But the last chapter of the story is not one of despair and decline but one of hope. And so I think that is something that is missing to some degree out there and is part of our mission at Votive to offer something better.
14 tales of extraordinary creatures and their saintly companions!
“Madeleine L’Engle is one of my favorite writers, and one of the things she said, which I think is so important and influences how I try to operate Votive, is, ‘If it’s not good enough for grown-ups, it’s not good enough for children.’”
BV: As you say, a lot of those principles—a child-centric experience with reading, an emphasis on Christian virtue, especially the virtue of hope—are some of the distinguishing marks of this imprint that we’re releasing. Tell us a little bit about Word on Fire Votive itself. How did it come to be? What’s it about?
HS: Word on Fire Publishing has been publishing great books and trying to communicate the Gospel. With that in mind, as children are learning to understand the world and form their ideas, this is such a crucial time to be reaching them and to be preparing them to receive the Gospel and understand the world in Gospel terms. And so it just seemed very key to start publishing books for children that are of really high quality, respecting the child reader, preparing their hearts for the Gospel message.
BV: Now there are lots of publishers of children’s books, even within the Catholic world. What would you say is unique about Word on Fire Votive, its vision, its mission, the types of books it publishes? What stands out?
HS: I think that as a parent who has purchased and read a lot of Catholic books with my children, what I often see are teaching books, which are not bad. It’s good to have a teaching book, and children are often going to learn something from a book. But I think that something that Word on Fire Votive really highlights in our books is to be very story-centric.
And that’s because God is an artist. He’s a storyteller, and he’s wired us to learn about him, the world, and ourselves through stories. That’s why Jesus tells parables. It’s how human beings are made. So at the center of our books is the attempt to share a good story that’s going to engage the child, and that’s how any kind of a beautiful message is going to be communicated.
And the other distinguishing thing about Votive is that we’re so focused on leading with beauty. That means the illustrations are gorgeous. The writing is going to be the highest quality and by the most wonderful writers. The design is going to be beautiful. So leading with beauty, that story-centric mission, and the rest revolve around that idea of respecting the child reader, that the child reading the book deserves this kind of quality, and that’s really what we want to offer.
“God is an artist. He’s a storyteller, and he’s wired us to learn about him, the world, and ourselves through stories.”
These fairy tales inspired C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and G.K. Chesterton!
BV: Let’s turn now to some of the specific books that illustrate these principles. The first Votive book is titled Saintly Creatures: 14 Tales of Animals and their Holy Companions. Tell us about this one.
HS: This book is by Alexi Sargeant and illustrated by Anita Barghigiani, and it’s this compilation of beautiful little stories of saints who either befriended an animal or were saved by an animal; these are really exciting, engaging stories of saints, from very ancient saints to Blessed Carlo Acutis and from all over the world. They’re just beautifully written, engaging stories.
Our goal with this is that the child reading the book is inspired to be a saint, that they see all of these different ways that people live their lives on fire with love for God and think, “How is God calling me to be a saint?” Recently, a friend of Word on Fire, Jessica Hooten Wilson, shared an early review copy with her daughter, and she said, “My daughter read this book and then said, ‘I want to be a saint!’” And we thought, “Yes! That’s exactly what we were hoping for.”
BV: Mission accomplished. Well, in addition to new books that we’re developing, we’re also going to be releasing new additions of classic children’s literature that have maybe gone out of favor, for whatever reason, and we’re going to do that with our new line of Word on Fire Votive Classics. The first Votive Classic that we’ve released is called The Golden Key and Other Fairy Tales by George MacDonald. Tell us about this one.
HS: Sure! George McDonald was a Scottish writer and minister. He was writing in the 1800s, and his stories had a huge impact on C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and all fantasy literature that came after him. So we wanted to start this series with this book because his writing, in the words of C.S. Lewis, baptized those imaginations. And I think the marker of this series is that these aren’t stories about saints or priests or anything explicitly Catholic, but the structure of these stories baptizes the imagination. They have this beautiful structure of hope, and when you dive into them, you can see elements of these Christian themes, even if they’re not hitting you over the head. But they’re forming the reader’s imagination.
BV: I love the idea that some of these heroes, many of whom are admired by Word on Fire followers—people like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R Tolkien—were shaped by books like these. How do you produce a Tolkien or a Lewis or a Chesterton? George MacDonald, the author of this collection, is one of those answers.
Let’s turn now to another book: Bless the Lord, which is a board book. Tell us about this one.
HS: This came to mind with Word on Fire’s beautiful Liturgy of the Hours project, which is trying to get more people praying the Hours and to make it easier for people already praying the Hours by having these beautiful Liturgy of the Hours booklets. The question came to mind: how can we help families pray the Hours together? How can we offer resources for children?
So this is a board book with one of the canticles from the Liturgy of the Hours, the one taken from the book of Daniel, which is the “Bless the Lord” canticle. And our illustrator did an incredible job making these beautiful scenes with the whole text of this canticle in the board book. So our vision is that the infant or toddler can hold on to this book and flip through the pages and be part of family prayer time or pray at Mass by having this to hold on to and engage with and participate.
BV: What I like is that if you’re praying the Liturgy of the Hours as a family, you’ll pray the Canticle of Daniel pretty often. It’s a regular part of Morning Prayer, so the rhythms, the cadences, the words of this great canticle of praise will seep into your family and even the little kids. You’ll begin to memorize it. It’ll change the way you see the world. So I love that we’re releasing prayer resources not only for adults but for children as well.
Let’s turn to another great Votive book. This one is by the esteemed theologian Abigail Favale, and it’s called Here I Am. We actually are releasing two versions of this book: one for boys and one for girls. Tell us about this one.
HS: This one came from the mind of Abigail Favale, who writes just incredible and wonderful Catholic books about gender and the theology of gender in line with Catholic teaching. She focuses a lot on the sacramentality of the body, so she wanted to write a book for children that really highlights our embodiment, how we are embodied creatures, that our bodies are gifts from God, and that when we look to Christ, our bodies are like icons of Christ’s body as we’re made in the image of God. She put together this incredible board book for young children—such a big concept—and she did it in such a beautiful way, just communicating that our bodies are gifts and connecting all these ideas.
We have one version where the main character is a boy, so the child can look at the illustrations and little boys can see himself in this character, and then another one where the main character is a little girl. The text is the same, but in the illustrations, you can see the different images. We’re so happy with how it turned out. I think it’s going to be wonderful.
“One of Word on Fire’s themes is to communicate that faith and science are not opposed to each other. And this is such an important thing to communicate when we’re speaking to young people.”
BV: I think parents are going to love this because a lot of parents that I’ve talked to are really concerned about the lessons their young children are learning either from the media, from school, or from friends about their bodies and their identity. This book does a great job communicating to kids that your body is a good thing, that your body is part of you. It’s not something outside of you that you yourself manipulate. It is you. And it also communicates the Christian dimension of the body. There’s a part of the story where it says, “God wanted us to see him. And so he made himself a body.” It’s highlighting how the Christian identification with the body is especially distinct among all other religions and worldviews. If you’re a parent that’s concerned about these questions and issues, this book would be great for your kids.
Alright, Haley. Let’s talk about one final book, a kid-level biography, of the great scientist Jérôme Lejeune. It’s called Jérôme Lejeune: The Saintly Geneticist. Tell us about this one.
HS: One of Word on Fire’s themes is to communicate that faith and science are not opposed to each other. And this is such an important thing to communicate when we’re speaking to young people. We especially don’t want to communicate the idea that you can either believe science or you can believe your Catholic faith—that they’re not compatible.
So we really wanted to highlight some scientists and stories of scientists who were holy men and women. One of these is Venerable Jérôme Lejeune, who was a French geneticist that discovered the chromosomal component of Down syndrome and was also a fierce advocate for the vulnerable, for every child’s right to life. This is a really compelling story of his faith, of all of his research, and also of his advocacy. I think it’s a wonderful story for children to be inspired by and to be receiving this understanding that Catholics make scientific progress. Catholics are involved in the scientific spheres. This is something that we can use to see that faith and science are not opposed at all. So all of those things are in one story: pro-life, saint, and science. We’re very excited about it.
BV: I want to talk about our new podcast. You’ve been podcasting for many years, but you’re going to launch this new podcast through Word on Fire called The Votive Podcast. What’s this one about?
HS: The concept behind this is that it’s always interesting to see what books formed writers like C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton. In some ways, that’s kind of the structure of this podcast. I’ll be speaking with writers, artists, and illustrators to find out what baptized their imagination, what books were formative for them and that really started them on this journey as artists and as Christians. So we’re going to have really interesting guests, talking about children’s literature, talking about books that formed them, and then from there jumping off into all kinds of children’s books and books of all kinds.
BV: Well, Haley, there are lots of exciting things coming soon from Word on Fire Votive. Thank you for all your hard work on it.
Interview between Word on Fire Senior Publishing Director Brandon Vogt and Editor of Word on Fire Votive Haley Stewart. Transcript drawn from a video interview. It has been lightly edited and shortened for readability.
A timely antidote to confusing messages about gender and identity
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Scott Hahn
Dr. Scott Hahn is the Fr. Michael Scanlan Professor of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he has taught for over thirty years. Author or editor of over forty books, Dr. Hahn is also Founder and President of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology (www.stpaulcenter.com).
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Learn about the Catholic sensibility of Bishop Barron.
In this issue of Evangelization & Culture, you will see the Catholic faith through the unique lens of Bishop Barron. Explore some of Bishop Barron’s theological writings, as well as the saints, spiritual masters, and mentors who played a key role in his own spiritual and intellectual formation. Dr. Eleonore Stump unpacks the mind of St. Thomas Aquinas. Dr. Matthew Nelson reflects on the pivotal influence of Robert Sokolowski. Dr. Scott Hahn examines the inner logic of Sacred Scripture through Barron’s biblical hermeneutic. Finally, Bishop Barron shares his lecture given at Oxford University on St. John Henry Newman and the New Evangelization.
“I detest ‘dumbed-down Catholicism’ and ‘beige Catholicism.’”
BISHOP ROBERT BARRON