This Is What I Pray Today: Divine Hours Prayers For Children

by Phyllis Tickle, Elsa Warnick (Illustrations)

Celebratory and comforting, simple and sweet, here is an illustrated book of prayer that serves as a kind of breviary for children. With three original, psalm-based prayers for each day of the week, children have a new prayer each morning, rest time, and bedtime. This is a book of days that will appeal to children of the many faiths that incorporate fixed-hour prayer, such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. With broad, gentle language and soft, soothing art, This Is What I Pray Today is a beautifully packaged volume that includes a ribbon bookmark and offers even the youngest children prayers for Sunday, Monday, and every day of the week.

Genres: Religion, Picture Books, Childrens

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Phyllis Natalie Tickle was an American author and lecturer whose work focuses on spirituality and religion issues. After serving as a teacher, professor, and academic dean, Tickle entered the publishing industry, serving as the founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, before then becoming a popular writer. She is well known as a leading voice in the emergence church movement. She is perhaps best known for The Divine Hours series of books, published by Doubleday Press, and her book The Great Emergence- How Christianity Is Changing and Why. Tickle was a member of the Episcopal Church, where she was licensed as both a lector and a lay eucharistic minister. She has been widely quoted by many media outlets, including Newsweek, Time, Life, The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, C-SPAN, PBS, The History Channel, the BBC and VOA. It has been said that "Over the past generation, no one has written more deeply and spoken more widely about the contours of American faith and spirituality than Phyllis Tickle." A biography of Tickle, written by Jon M. Sweeney, was published in February 2018. Phyllis Tickle: A Life (Church Publishing, Inc), has been widely reviewed.

Reviews

[Jessie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like the idea of this book, but I'm less fond of the execution.

It includes three prayers for each day of the week, one for morning, one for naptime (midday rest, and it often is explicitly about rest), and one for night. All the prayers are based off of psalms. Some of the ties to psalms are tighter than others.

The audience of this book seems pretty young, and these aren't prayers that I think that most children in the main audience could easily read on their own. It really needs to be read with someone older.

I like a lot of the ideas being expressed, but the rhythm and rhyme is all over the place. These are fine prayers, but they're not particularly good poems.

A lot of the poems, especially for the morning, rely on lists of things that the child is thankful for, and those are going to resonate to really different extents with different kids.

[Jo Oehrlein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the concept (prayers for children at morning, rest time, and bedtime). These are based on Psalms, which is also a good idea.

However, the writing is uneven. They're presented as poems, but the rhymes and rhythm are occasionally lacking.

[Brandy Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great way to introduce your kids to the divine hours.