Mommynificent

I wanted to take a few minutes to share with you some of our family’s favorite Easter books and resources. We are really big on creating meaningful family traditions to celebrate Jesus, and I wanted to share some of the books and DVDs we return to year after year. (All the links below are affiliate links. By clicking on them, you are supporting this site even if you don’t buy the product, and we appreciate it very much! If you choose to buy the product, you will not be charged any extra, but we will make a small commission. Thanks!)

Preparing for Easter by James L. Evans – We absolutely love this book! I have read it every year during Lent for almost 20 years now! My first time through it was with a group of RAs during my sophomore year of college. I have since done it alone, with my kindergarten class, and now with my own children. This book is full of object lessons that amaze my children and touch my heart every single year. As I was putting our 3-year old to bed a few nights ago, her last words to me were, “Night, Mom. I just love devotions so much.” ‘Nuff said.

Resurrection iWitness written and designed by Doug Powell – If you haven’t seen this book yet, you absolutely MUST! It is amazing. It’s like a flap book for adults! (Okay, maybe ages 7 and up.) But my kids seriously have to kind of wrestle it out of my husband’s and my hands because it really is so fascinating. It is full of letters and notes that give evidence for the resurrection of Jesus by using the easy-to-understand Minimal Facts argument. We love this book! I look forward to pulling it out every year!

The Very First Easter by Paul Maier, illustrated by Francisco Ordaz – This is a picture book that has a lot of text. I’d recommend it for ages 7 and up. It’s about a small family – two parents and a boy, about age 9. In the book, the father shares the story of Jesus with his son. This is one that we peruse every year but I can’t say it’s a strong favorite like the next one.

Peter’s First Easter by Walter Wangerin Jr., illustrated by Timothy Ladwig – If you’ve been around this blog for long, you’ll know I am a HUGE fan of Tim Ladwig’s illustrations. He is a personal friend from an internship I did in college, and I have avidly followed his work ever since. I can sit and stare at just the cover of this book for hours. You can see so much of the story just in these two people’s faces. This is another picture book with a lot of text; I consider it more of a mini-chapter book and we read it over the week before Easter each year.

My Lord and My God: Thomas’ Incredible Account of Jesus’ Resurrection by Calvin Miller, illustrated by Ron DiCianni - This is another picture book with loads of text, eight chapters to be exact. It is one that I personally enjoy reading each year. The kids enjoy the pictures but the text is still a bit over their heads. I imagine they will enjoy it as they hit the double digits. Calvin Miller’s prose is very poetic, and I always find this book very moving. Walking through the entire story from Thomas’ perspective is very powerful. We used this book and the previous one alongside the Gospels last year to learn about telling the same story from different perspectives.

Benjamin’s Box: The Story of the Resurrection Eggs by Melody Carlson, illustrated by Jack Stockman – I feel like everyone probably already knows this book as it’s become sort of the quintessential Easter book over the last decade or so. We love it, and it gets read by my older kids every year, but like some of the above books, it really has too many words for the little ones in my opinion. I think that’s especially unfortunate in this instance because, while the Resurrection Eggs are absolutely wonderful for preschoolers, this book is far too long to hold their interest.

For this reason, I was overjoyed to find this next book and the accompanying DVD below. The Story of the Resurrection Eggs in Rhyme and Song: Miss Patty Cake Opens Up the Wonder of the Easter Story by Jean Thomason and Nancy Gordon fills this gap perfectly! This book does such a wonderful job of walking through the Resurrection Eggs with young children as does the DVD below. The book has gentle illustrations that are a combination of photos and cartoon drawings, and walks through the Resurrection Eggs step by step in a way that is easier for preschoolers to follow.

The book also contains the lyrics to all the songs in the companion DVD: Miss Pattycake’s Eggstravaganza. If you’ve tried Miss Pattycake before and found her annoying, I encourage you to still give this one a try. I can hardly stand the other Miss Pattycake DVDs, but I love this one as do my children. We watch it year-round, and they love it. We only pull out the book around Easter, and they’re always so excited to read through it and sing the songs. My 3-year old and 7-year old read through this book several times a day throughout the days leading up to Easter. The DVD is very similar to the book in that Miss Pattycake walks through each of the Resurrection Eggs and very gently explains the story of Easter.

The Resurrection Eggs: Open Up the Wonder of the Easter Story - The is the board book that goes with the above two books. We don’t have this one, but it gets requested every year, so I thought I should share it in case your children are still in a board book stage.

If you are looking for board books,
The Easter Story by Patricia A. Pingry, illustrated by Mary Ann Utt is a really good option. It has about 200 words and gently introduces little ones to Jesus, including his teaching and his healing. It gently reveals the meaning of Easter with the story of Christ’s death and Resurrection. Bright, colorful illustrations make this a perfect book for toddlers.

The Parable of the Lily by Liz Curtis Higgs, illustrated by Nancy Munger is another perennial favorite for the younger ones. My 9-year still loves it though. I love this parable of a little girl who spurns an ugly gift of a lily bulb from her father and throws it out only to have it blossom on Easter morning. I wish the book did a better job unpacking the parable and that the verses on each page were easier to read aloud while reading the story. I always find it clunky going back and forth from verse to story. Nonetheless, we love this book and I think you will too.

Before and After Easter: Activities and Ideas – Lent to Pentecost by Debbie Trafton O’Neal, illustrated by David LaRochelle – I love this book even though we haven’t actually used it yet! It has an activity or craft for each day leading up to Easter, starting on Ash Wednesday. We are always involved with the first book I mentioned, Preparing for Easter, and so we never get to the activities mentioned in this one, but every year, I resolve to use it next year because the activities are so good! I also like that it includes an activity for each of the 7 weeks between Easter and Pentecost and an activity for the day of Pentecost. We are planning to do these this year.

And last but certainly not least, if you haven’t had a chance to watch Buck Denver Asks: What’s in the Bible? Volume Ten – Jesus is the Good News!, now is the perfect time to do it! We love all of the What’s in the Bible DVDs as they do such a fantastic job of explaining Scripture and making it come alive for children as one big story of God loving and redeeming His people! The days surrounding Easter are a perfect time to work through the whole series! You can get 35% off of the whole series if you buy from What’s In the Bible before April 15th! If you’re interested, please consider using our affiliate link – it won’t cost you any extra but we’ll make a small commission. Thanks!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this walk through our Easter shelf! What are your favorite books and resources for Easter? We’d love to add to our collection! I’d be especially interested to hear of any books that do a good job tying together Passover and Easter. We always celebrate them together, but I haven’t found any books that are a good fit.