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Being a child in the fifteenth century had its drawbacks—there were no books to read! When the printing press was invented in 1437, the first English printer, William Caxton, dusted off a set of old animal stories called Aesop's Fables for adults, followed by Le Morte d'Arthur and the fable Reynard the Fox.

But it wasn't until 1477 that a book specifically for children hit the streets—a collection of rhymes to teach youngsters manners called The Book of Curtesye.

In 1998, more than half a millennium later, the number of children's books in print in the United States alone was 126,600; in 1996 almost 380 million books were sold.

What makes a children's book worth reading?

Angela Elwell Hunt, author of The Tale of Three Trees, makes this analogy. "Good books are like apples. In an apple, there's a sweet meaning beneath the surface story. People find all sorts of meaning in the story, and the lessons are applicable to adults as well as children."

Our panel of judges had a difficult challenge—choose ten top Christian children's books. The results? A bushel of sweet-tasting apples.

"The humor, magic, and mystery of these books draw me to them again and again. Always my eyes are opened to the untamable and compassionate nature of Christ, as depicted through Aslan."
—Amy Nappa

His children's books never won any literary awards, but Clive Staples Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia (first book published in 1950) achieved what the Oxbridge professor desired—they won the hearts of young and old alike. Selected as number 5 by a different panel of Today's Christian judges last year for "Fiction that Every Christian Should Read," the Narnia books win hands-down for the children's books picks.

This is storytelling at its finest. Like the four young siblings—Lucy, Peter, Susan, and Edmund—readers are swept through a wardrobe to a secret world (Narnia) alive with fascinating characters impacted by the personification of good (the lion Aslan) and evil (the White Witch).

For Lewis, the Narnia stories were not allegories, though the biblical parallels (i.e., Aslan clearly fulfills the role of Jesus) cannot be denied. Lewis's strong faith in God and in a child's ability to understand truth shines through.

"My mom fought a losing battle with cancer as I was growing up. When I read and reread the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, I could escape the uncertainty and fear of my life and through the Ingalls, recapture the warmth, security, and love I had experienced in my own family during the early years."
—Dr. Mary Manz Simon

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie has been a favorite for boys and girls for more than 50 years. Published in 1935, as the third in the Little House series, this book chronicles the Ingalls move to Independence, Kansas, where they built a log house, with glass windows, in Indian Territory. A replica of the Ingalls cabin in Independence is open to visitors from May 15 to September 1, one of 12 Laura Ingalls Wilder heritage sites across the country from Florida to California. The Little House series also spawned a popular television show, still seen in reruns.

Laura's tales of hearth, home, and frontier—underscored by her unshakeable faith in God—grow more appealing as ties to family and the land grow more tenuous for most of us.

*3 The Book of Virtues
by William J. Bennett

Time magazine had a good idea: "[The Book of Virtues] ought to be distributed, like an owner's manual, to new parents leaving the hospital." Newsweek said, "Maybe it's just what the country needs."

Who can resist 800+ pages of fables, poems, stories, fairy tales, and historical sketches from Aesop, Longfellow, the Bible, Hans Christian Anderson, James Baldwin, and others? In short excerpts, we are reacquainted with "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," "Paul Revere's Ride," "The Ten Commandments," "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," and so much more. This literary sampler is what William J. Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, calls a "how-to book for moral literacy."

Some critics think Bennett takes all the fun out of a child's imaginative journey by "assigning" a virtue to the selections, but we consider it a box of chocolates—delicious bites to savor and enjoy.

*4 A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeleine L'Engle

The 1963 Newbery Medal-winning novel, A Wrinkle in Time, takes the battle between good and evil via time travel into a world interwoven with science fiction mysteries and scientific realities.

Three children, Meg and Charles Wallace Murry and their friend Calvin O'Keefe, embark on a perilous journey challenging time and space to rescue Meg and Charles's father from the evil giant brain. The travelers, accompanied by three good witches, must rely on their individual and collective strengths to succeed. L'Engle sprinkles foreign phrases throughout to stretch the reader's vocabulary and probing dialogue to get everyone thinking about life's big questions.

The writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City believes the book helps satisfy a child's "passionate need for the dimension of transcendence, mysticism, and way-outness," a theme she hasn't finished exploring in her novels.

*5 The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings
by J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel (J. R. R.) Tolkien, Oxford professor and friend of C. S. Lewis, was grading papers one day in his study when he scribbled these words on a blank piece of paper: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

With that simple sentence, he'd stumbled upon the race of little people—child-like hobbits—that would save Middle-earth, the grand and exquisite world he had created. The Hobbit was released in the United States in 1938, a year after its publishing debut in England. The wildly successful Lord of the Rings trilogy followed in 1954 and 1955.

The beauty of Tolkien's mythology is simultaneously its complexity and its simplicity—a world detailed enough for the reader to get lost in while confronting a basic universal storyline, the battle between good and evil.

"I first read The Tale of Three Trees in a bookstore and I cried. Eight years and dozens of readings later, I still cry when I read it. Truly this tale was inspired by the Holy Spirit."
—Jay Grelen

"Once upon a mountaintop, three little trees stood and dreamed of what they wanted to become when they grew up." So begins the traditional folktale retold by Angela Elwell Hunt in 1989.

The trees did grow tall and strong, and their dreams grew, too. One wanted to be a beautiful chest, another a strong ship for kings, while the third tree wanted only to stay on the mountaintop. When the woodcutters arrive with axes in hand, would their dreams finally come true? They don't, and yet they do as the trees play a part in Christ's story.

Author Hunt explains that she first heard the story in a song or read it as a Christmas card, but knew it hadn't been done as a picture book. She decided to make the message subtle, but strong. Her use of alliteration and parallelism make her admit that "it's probably the most poetic picture book I've ever done."

*7 The Arch Bible Stories
by various artists

Started in 1959 as Lantern Books and renamed in 1964 as Arch Books in honor of St. Louis's Gateway Arch, this series has sold more than 58 million copies and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Concordia Publishing House, located in St. Louis, of course, currently offers about 80 different books in the Arch series. Each is a brightly illustrated and lyrical re-telling of a Bible story found between Genesis and Acts. God, I've Gotta Talk to You breaks the biblical mold; 1 million copies of this collection of prayers for children written by Anne Jennings and Walter Wangerin makes it the top seller. A bargain at $1.99 each, Christian retailers have trouble keeping Arch Books on their shelves. But there's plenty to go around; Concordia unveils four new titles every six months.

*8 You Are Special
by Max Lucado

Dedicated to the children of his church, Oak Hills Church of Christ in San Antonio, minister Max Lucado's You Are Special has a message that never grows old: God loves you, flaws and all. Accompanied by Sergio Martinez's skillful illustrations, Lucado takes readers to the world of the Wemmicks, small wooden people created by the woodcarver Eli. The pretty and talented Wemmicks receive stars every day from each other, but those less than perfect only get ugly gray dots. One day, downhearted Punchinello, neither handsome nor talented, pays a visit to Eli where he learns an important lesson—one that parallels God's unconditional love for us. Our judge Jay Grelen, columnist for The Daily Oklahoman, believes that no child—or adult—should miss this book. We wholeheartedly agree.

"My husband and I became Christians late in life—with five children. As we read The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes to our children, the glorious illustrations enlivened our new faith."
—Barbara Curtis

In the early 1950s, Ken Taylor, then director of Moody Literature Mission, a division of Moody Bible Institute, couldn't find a storybook for his children that encompassed the entire Bible. So, he decided to write his own.

The handwritten stories were given to a Moody typing pool, but the immensity of the task discouraged Taylor. Was it worth the effort?

Then a woman who said she had been typing his manuscript stopped Taylor in the hallway, excited about the book. The encouragement helped him finish.

When Taylor went the next day to thank the woman, he couldn't find her. The supervisor didn't know who he was describing. Taylor, most famous for The Living Bible, believes God had sent an angel to tell him to go on. His manuscript became The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes, now 1.5 million copies strong.

*10 Christy
by Catherine Marshall

With increasing interest in family genealogies, no one should miss the wonderful story of Catherine Marshall's mother, Leonora Whitaker Wood, who arrived in the mountains of Appalachia as a 19-year-old in 1912 to teach in a one-room schoolhouse.

Marshall had always heard the stories, but it wasn't until she and her mother visited the area forty-some years later that the idea took hold. "The secrets of the human spirit that Alice Henderson [the Quaker mission worker] knew are needed by so many today," Leonora explained. "The mountain people—my friends—I want people to know them as they really were."

Using her mother's voice and basing it on actual events, Marshall's fictional Christy (1967) fulfills her mother's wish—the characters seem to walk off the page. In 1994, they walked onto television sets, too, for a prime time series. Track down an unabridged edition—Marshall's language and description ring true.

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