What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
This topic is about
The Beginner's Devotional
SOLVED: Children's/YA
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SOLVED. Children's Christian Book about Morals & Values with Questions after Each Story -- Main character may have been a girl named Joy! [s]
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None of these; the people were cartoons.
Do you remember how many pages long it was, approximately?
UPDATE: Mon, Feb 20, 9:30 PM, u/taxicab_ replied to your comment in r/tipofmytongue: Ok I think I found it. It’s “The Beginners Devotional” by Stephen Barclift https://www.ebay.com/itm/404147902046
What's the Name of That Book???
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Here’s what we know:
My twin and I read this used, children’s Christian book around 1995-2000, but we really read it closer to 1997. She is insisting we read it BEFORE 1997 though. We were eight years old in 1997, and the book seemed to be geared toward parents of our age group. We read it at our daycare in Murrieta, California, so whilst we were there five days a week, it was not something we owned. It was not a Christian daycare, so I don’t think it was, like, from one of those Christian bookstores or anything.
I FEEL like it was a very large, white hardcover book with golden lettering and a (missing) book jacket or maybe a white hardcover with golden EMBOSSING/ENGRAVING, but my twin is saying she thought it wa something called a “stripped book”. It was NOT like a children’s BIBLE. My twin said it was a square book - not rectangular, and that I agree with. She also confirmed the book we did read was used at the time.
The premise of the book was it was several stories about morals, and really, the only three we remember are about sibling rivalry, burning the flag, not making fun of a kid that is disabled. We think the bullies called the special kid DROOLY, or maybe he was in a wheelchair. In hindsight, I feel like it was about, like, CHRISTIAN values; it brought up bible verses versus being strictly about MORALS. My twin said the flag one was about not stepping on it – not about burning, but I remember the story being something like they’d spent the day on the beach and were in a traffic jam, and there were some people burning the flag on the side of the road or something? It had a ton of different short stories in there, along with two pages at the end of each chapter with questions to ask your children. Whilst I described them as questions, she used the word exercises. I tried looking up things using keywords like anthology or devotional too.
Since it was back in the day, it was 2D animation, not like 3D characters. Not new or modern. It was like the old school style of art – before we had graphic designers and all that. All characters were animated - there were no real photographs of people in the whole book; it was just cartoon folks.
We’re pretty sure it was a family with a daughter – possibly named Joy and her two brothers with her mom and dad. One older brother and one younger. They lived in a house with a yard - versus an apartment. We saw the seasons change as the book progressed. Perhaps it had something to do with the seasons and holidays - the various questions might have been geared toward yearly events – as mentioned, Fourth of July. We agree on this part about the family. I feel like it might have been a book to read for the whole year – but that would be massive. I think the flag burning story was around the Fourth of July..
Again, with the time frame, this was from the 80s-90s; it wasn’t after 9/11; it wasn’t “woke”, it wasn’t GLBT+ friendly. I don’t remember seeing a ton of diverse characters. This book was made for parents to read a different story each night and then ask the questions. This was NOT just a book of stories. She said it felt like it was a hundred stories, but since we were kids, it could have been less. It’s probably a month’s worth of the stories and questions.
She said the morals would still be relevant today - nothing like where ideas would have to be retracted or anything. Above when I said it wasn’t GBLT+ friendly, I just meant those types of topics which some more liberal or modern churches are comfortable bringing up, that sort of thing was not mentioned – not that it was anti-GLBT+.
We’ve been looking for this basically our whole lives. Even our youngest nephew can drive now, ha. This is all the information we could think of, and we thank you in advance for your help.
Someone previously suggested Joy Berry, and whilst that's in the same vein, that's not the book we're looking for. It's not Questions Children Ask - as the book is about questions parents/teachers ask children, not the reverse. It's also not The Children's Book of Virtues, as that's on the very first page of Google. Both of the latter two looks more vintage whereas the book we're looking for has more cartoony type characters.